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Gftje  RiPcrsifle  Biographical  Series 

NUMBER  13 


STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

BY 


WILLIAM  GARROTT  BROWN 


STEPHEN  ARNOLD 
DOUGLAS 


BY 


WILLIAM  GARROTT  BROWN 

e 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
(aflbe  Ciibersibe  Wre0,  Cambribee 
1902 


COPYRIGHT,  I902,  BY  WILLIAM  GARROTT  BROWN 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Published  March)  iqos 


°i  2.3. 3.73 
^3(oS> 


To  J.  S.  Jr. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  Youth  and  the  West  . . . . 1 

II.  The  House  and  the  Senate  ...  31 

HI.  The  Great  Question 58 

IV.  Leadership 82 

Y.  The  Rivals 112 


The  portrait  is  from  a photograph  by 
Brady  in  the  Library  of  the  State 
Department  at  Washington. 


STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


CHAPTER  I 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


The  ten  years  of  American  history  from 
1850  to  1860  have  a fascination  second  only 
to  that  of  the  four  years  which  followed. 
Indeed,  unless  one  has  a taste  for  military 
science,  it  is  a question  whether  the  great  ^ 
war  itself  is  more  absorbing  than  the  great  ^ 
debate  that  led  up  to  it ; whether  even 
Gettysburg  and  Chickamauga,  the  March  to 
the  Sea,  the  Wilderness,  Appomattox,  are 
of  more  surpassing  interest  than  the  dramatic 
political  changes,  — the  downfall  of  the 
Whig  party,  the  swift  rise  and  the  equally 
swift  submergence  of  the  Know-Nothing 
party,  the  birth  of  the  Republican  party,  the 
disruption  and  overthrow  of  the  long-domi- 
nant Democratic  party,  — through  which  the 


2 STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

country  came  at  last  to  see  that  only  the 
sword  could  make  an  end  of  the  long  contro- 
versy between  the  North  and  the  South. 

The  first  years  of  the  decade  were  marked 
by  the  passing  of  one  group  of  statesmen  and 
the  rise  of  another  group.  Calhoun’s  last 
speech  in  the  Senate  was  read  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  debate  over  those  measures 
which  finally  took  shape  as  the  Compromise 
of  1850.  The  Compromise  was  the  last  in- 
stance of  the  leadership  of  Clay.  The  fa- 
mous Seventh  of  March  speech  in  defense  of. 
it  was  Webster’s  last  notable  oration.  These 
voices  stilled,  many  others  took  up  the  preg- 
nant theme.  Davis  and  Toombs  and  Stephens 
and  other  well-trained  Southern  statesmen 
defended  slavery  aggressively ; Seward  and 
Sumner  and  Chase  insisted  on  a hearing  for 
the  aggressive  anti-slavery  sentiment ; Cass 
and  Buchanan  maintained  for  a time  their 
places  as  leaders  in  the  school  of  compromise. 
But  from  the  death  of  Clay  to  the  presiden- 
tial election  of  1860  the  most  resonant  voice 
of  them  all  was  the  voice  of  Stephen  Arnold 
Douglas.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


3 


during  the  whole  period  the  centre  of  the  stage 
was  his,  and  his  the  most  stirring  part.  In 
1861,  the  curtain  fell  upon  him  still  resolute, 
vigorous,  commanding.  When  it  rose  again 
for  another  scene,  he  was  gone  so  completely 
that  nowadays  it  is  hard  for  us  to  understand 
what  a -place  he  had.  Three  biographers 
writing  near  the  time  of  his  death  were 
mainly  concerned  to  explain  how  he  came  to 
be  first  in  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries. 
A biographer  writing  now  must  try  to  explain 
why  he  has  been  so  lightly  esteemed  by  that 
posterity  to  which  they  confidently  committed 
his  fame.  Blind  Tom,  the  negro  mimic,  hav- 
ing once  heard  him  speak,  was  wont  for  many 
years  to  entertain  curious  audiences  by  re- 
producing those  swelling  tones  in  which  he 
rolled  out  his  defense  of  popular  sovereignty, 
and  it  is  not  improbable  that  Douglas  owes 
to  the  marvelous  imitator  of  sounds  a consid- 
erable part  of  such  fame  as  he  has  among 
uneducated  men  in  our  time.  Among  his- 
torical students,  however  seriously  his  de- 
serts are  questioned,  there  is  no  question  of 
the  importance  of  his  career. 


4 STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

He  was  born  April  23,  1813,  at  Brandon, 
Vermont,  the  son  of  Stephen  Arnold  Douglas 
and  Sarah  Fisk,  his  wife.  His  father,  a 
successful  physician,  was  doubtless  of  Scotch 
descent ; hut  the  founder  of  the  Douglas 
family  in  America  was  married  in  North- 
amptonshire. He  landed  on  Cape  Ann  in 
1639-40,  but  in  1660  he  made  his  home  at 
New  London,  Connecticut.  Dr.  Douglas’s 
mother  was  an  Arnold  of  Rhode  Island,  de- 
scended from  that  Governor  Arnold  who 
was  associated  with  Roger  Williams  in  the 
founding  of  the  colony.  Sarah  Fisk’s  mother 
was  also  an  Arnold,  and  of  the  same  family. 
Their  son  was  therefore  of  good  New  Eng- 
land stock,  and  amply  entitled  to  his  middle 
name.  Dr.  Douglas  died  suddenly  of  apo- 
plexy in  July,  1813  ; it  is  said  that  he  held 
the  infant  Stephen  in  his  arms  when  he  was 
stricken.  His  widow  made  her  home  with  a 
bachelor  brother  on  a farm  near  Brandon,  and 
the  boy’s  early  years  were  passed  in  an  en- 
vironment familiar  to  readers  of  American 
biography  — the  simplicity,  the  poverty,  the 
industry,  and  the  serious-mindedness  of  rural 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


5 


New  England.  He  was  delicate,  with  a lit- 
tle bit  of  a body  and  a very  large  head,  but 
quick-witted  and  precocious,  and  until  he  was 
fifteen  years  of  age  his  elders  permitted  him 
to  look  forward  to  a collegiate  education  and 
a professional  career. 

But  by  that  time  the  uncle  was  married, 
and  an  heir  was  born  to  him.  Stephen  was 
therefore  made  to  understand  tliat  the  ex- 
pense of  his  education  could  be  met  only 
from  his  mother’s  limited  means.  He 
promptly  resolved  to  learn  a trade,  walked 
fourteen  miles  to  the  neighboring  town  of 
Middlebury,  and  apprenticed  himself  to  a 
cabinet-maker.  He  worked  at  cabinet-mak- 
ing two  years,  and  afterwards,  even  when 
he  had  risen  so  high  that  many  of  his 
countrymen  were  willing  he  should  try  his 
hand  at  making  cabinets  of  men,  he  pro- 
tested that  those  two  years  were  by  far  the 
happiest  of  his  life,  and  that  he  would  never 
willingly  have  exchanged  his  place  in  the 
Middlebury  workshop  for  any  other  place 
whatsoever.  As  it  was,  he  left  it  because 
he  was  not  strong  enough  for  that  sort  of 
work. 


6 STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

The  following  year  he  pursued  his  studies 
at  the  academy  of  Brandon.  Therrlmr  mo- 
ther married  again,  and  he  went  with  her  to 
the  home  of  his  stepfather,  Gehazi-Granger, 
Esquire,  near  Canandaigua,  New  York,  and 
finished  his  schooling  at  the  Canandaigua 
Academy,  which  appears  to  have  been  an  ex- 
cellent one.  Meanwhile,  he  also  read  law, 
and  showed  great  proficiency  both  in  his 
classical  and  his  legal  studies.  Not  much 
is  on  record  concerning  his  schoolboy  life. 
It  is  known,  however,  that  he  had  a way  of 
making  his  fellows  like  him,  so  that  they  of 
their  own  accord  put  him  forward,  and  that 
he  had  a lively  interest  in  polities.  It  is 
said  that  even  so  early  as  the  campaign  of 
1828,  when  he  was  but  fifteen,  he  organized 
a band  of  his  playmates  to  make  war  on  the 
“ coffin  handbills  ” wherewith  the  Adams 
men  sought  to  besmirch  the  military  fame 
of  General  Jackson,  already  become  his 
hero.  At  Canandaigua,  four  years  later,  he 
espoused  the  same  cause  in  debating  clubs, 
and  won  an  ascendency  among  his  fellows  by 
his  readiness  and  the  extent  of  his  informa- 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


7 


tion.  In  tlie  life  of  another  man,  these  boy- 
ish performances  might  be  set  down  merely 
as  signs  of  promise  ; but  Douglas  was  so 
soon  immersed  in  real  politics,  and  I’ose  to 
distinction  with  such  astounding  swiftness, 
that  his  performances  as  a schoolboy  may 
well  be  accounted  the  actual  beginning,  and 
not  merely  a premonition,  of  his  career. 

He  was  only  twenty,  when,  in  June,  1833, 
he  set  forth  to  enter  upon  it. 

Save  that  he  was  going  West,  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  had  any  destination  clearly 
in  mind.  He  carried  letters  to  certain  per- 
sons in  Cleveland,  and  stopped  there  to 
see  them,  and  so  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Sherlock  J.  Andrews,  a leading  lawyer  of 
the  town,  who  persuaded  him  to  remain  and 
read  law  in  his  office  until  a year  should/^-" — 
elapse  and  he  could  be  admitted  to  the  Ohio 
bar.  However,  in  less  than  a week  he  fell 
ill  of  a fever  which  did  not  leave  him  until 
the  expense  of  it  had  well-nigh  emptied  his 
slender  purse.  His  physicians,  fearing  he 
was  too  slight  and  delicate  for  Western  hard- 
ships, urged  him  to  go  back  to  Canandaigua, 


8 STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

but  when  he  left  Cleveland  he  again  turned 
westward,  resolved  in  his  own  mind  never  to 
go  back  without  the  evidences  of  success  in 
his  life.  It  is  doubtful  if  among  all  the 
thousands  who  in  those  days  were  constantly 
faring  westward,  from  New  England  towns 
and  the  parishes  of  Virginia  and  the  Caro- 
linas,  there  ever  was  a youth  more  reso- 
lutely and  boldly  addressed  to  opportunity 
than  he.  Poor,  broken  in  health,  almost 
diminutive  in  physical  stature,  and  quite  un- 
known, he  made  his  way  first  to  Cincin- 
nati, then  to  Louisville,  then  to  St.  Louis, 
in  search  of  work.  Coming  almost  to  the 
end  of  his  resources,  he  reasoned  that  it 
would  be  best  for  him  to  seek  some  country 
town,  where  his  expenses  would  be  slight  ; 
and  guided  merely  by  a book  of  travel  he 
had  read  he  fixed  on  a town  which,  as  it 
happened,  bore  the  name  of  his  political 
patron  saint.  In  November,  1833,  being 
now  twenty  years  and  six  months  old,  he  ar- 
rived at  Jacksonville,  Illinois,  with  a sum 
total  of  thirty-seven  cents  in  his  pocket. 
The  glimpses  we  get  of  him  during  his  wan- 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  9 

derings,  from  the  recollections  of  certain  men 
with  whom  he  made  acquaintance  in  stages 
and  on  river  steamboats,  make  a curious  and 
striking  picture  of  American  character.  The 
feverish,  high-strung  boy  was  never  dismayed 
and  never  a dreamer,  but  always  confident, 
purposeful,  good-humored. 

He  found  no  work  at  Jacksonville,  and 
walked  to  Winchester,  sixteen  miles  to  the 
southwestward,  where  he  hoped  to  get  work 
as  a teacher.  The  next  morning,  seeing  a 
crowd  assembled  in  the  public  square  of  the 
village,  he  pushed  his  way  to  the  centre  and 
learned  that  there  was  to  be  an  auction  of 
the  wares  of  a merchant  who  had  recently 
died.  The  auctioneer  was  in  need  of  a clerk 
to  keep  the  record  of  the  sales,  and  the  place 
was  offered  to  the  young  stranger.  He  took 
it,  served  three  days,  earned  six  dollars,  made 
acquaintance  with  the  farmers  gathered  for 
the  sale,  and  got  a chance  in  the  talk  about 
politics  to  display  those  qualities  which  he 
never  failed  to  display  when  opportunity 
offered  — the  utmost  readiness  in  debate, 
good-natured  courtesy,  and  keen  political 


10  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


instinct.  A school  was  arranged  for  him, 
and  within  a week  he  had  forty  pupils  en- 
tered for  three  months.  A lawyer  of  the 
place  befriended  him  with  the  loan  of  some 
hooks,  and  he  gave  his  evenings  to  law  and 
politics.  When  the  three  months  were  ended, 
he  went  back  to  Jacksonville  and  opened  an 
office.  March  4,  1834,  he  was  licensed  to 
practice,  and  from  that  time  he  rose  faster 
than  any  man  in  Illinois,  if  not  in  the  whole 
country,  notwithstanding  that  he  rose  on  the 
lines  along  which  many  and  many  another 
young  American  was  struggling  toward  pro- 
minence, and  notwithstanding  that  Illinois 
was  exceptionally  full,  as  later  years  were  to 
prove,  of  young  men  fitted  for  such  careers  as 
Douglas  sought  — notwithstanding,  too,  that 
there  had  already  drifted  to  New  Salem,  in 
the  very  next  county,  a young  Kentuckian 
destined  to  such  eminence  that  the  Illinois 
of  those  years  is  oftenest  studied  now  for 
light  on  him,  and  is  most  amply  revealed  to 
us  in  the  hooks  about  him. 

But  for  the  very  reason  that  Douglas  rose 
so  fast  it  is  not  necessary,  in  order  to  under- 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


11 


stand  how  or  why  he  rose,  to  study  the  con- 
ditions and  men  he  had  to  deal  with  so  care- 
fully as  they  have  done  who  seek  to  explain 
for  us  the  slower  progress  of  that  strange  ca- 
reer with  which  his  is  indissolubly  associated. 
Jacksonville,  which  was  to  be  his  home  for  a 
few  years,  was  a small  country  town,  but  it 
was  the  county  seat  of  Morgan,  one  of  the 
two  wealthiest  and  most  populous  counties 
in  the  State.  A few  years  earlier,  that 
whole  region  had  been  a frontier,  but  the  first 
roughness  was  now  worn  away.  True,  the 
whole  northern  half  of  Illinois  was  practically 
unsettled,  and  Chicago  was  but  three  years 
old,  and  not  yet  important.  But  it  appears 
that  the  general  character  of  the  central 
counties  was  already  fixed,  and  what  fol- 
lowed was  of  the  nature  of  growth  rather 
than  change.  Certain  small  towns,  like 
Springfield,  were  to  become  cities,  and  certain 
others,  like  New  Salem,  were  to  disappear. 
Railroads  were  not  yet,  though  many  were 
planning,  and  manufactures  were  chiefly  of 
the  domestic  sort.  But  in  the  matter  of  the 
opportunities  it  presented  to  aspiring  youth 


12  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

the  country  was  already  Western,  and  no 
longer  wild  Western.  Hunting  shirts  and 
moccasins  were  disappearing.  Knives  in 
one’s  belt  had  gone  out  of  fashion.  The 
merely  adventurous  were  passing  beyond  the 
Mississippi,  and  the  field  was  open  to  the 
enterprising,  the  speculative,  the  ambitious. 

Enterprise  and  speculation  were  in  the 
air,  and  ambition,  if  it  took  a political  turn, 
must  perforce  take  account  of  them.  The 
whole  country  was  prosperous,  and  Illinois 
was  possessed  with  the  fever  of  development 
then  epidemic  throughout  the  West  and  the 
South.  If  one  examines  the  legislation  of 
any  of  the  States  west  of  the  Alleghanies 
during  the  second  administration  of  President 
Jackson,  by  far  the  most  numerous  category 
of  bills  will  be  found  to  deal  with  internal 
improvements,  particularly  railroads  and 
canals.  Money,  however,  was  needed  for 
these  things,  and  Illinois,  like  all  new  coun- 
tries, had  to  look  backward  to  older  commu- 
nities for  capital.  President  Jackson  had 
but  lately  made  his  final  assault  upon  the 
National  Bank,  the  principal  dispenser  of 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  13 

capital,  by  the  removal  of  the  deposits,  and 
public  opinion  was  much  divided  on  his 
course,  when  Douglas  opened  his  law  office 
and  began  to  discuss  public  questions  with 
his  neighbors.  While  he  still  lived  at  Win- 
chester, he  had  helped  to  get  subscribers  for 
a Democratic  newspaper  at  Jacksonville, 
and  he  soon  called  upon  the  editor,  who  was 
first  surprised  at  his  visitor's  youthful  ap- 
pearance and  then,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  at 
“ the  strength  of  his  mind,  the  development 
of  his  intellect,  and  his  comprehensive  know- 
ledge of  the  political  history  of  his  country.” 

Boy  as  he  looked,  and  boy  as  he  was,  for 
he  had  not  yet  passed  his  twenty-first  birth- 
day, Douglas  actually  got  the  leadership  of 
the  Jackson  party  in  that  neighborhood  be- 
fore he  had  lived  there  a month.  An  en- 
thusiastic supporter  of  the  President’s  pol- 
icy on  the  bank  question,  he  talked  about 
the  matter  so  well  on  Saturdays,  when,  ac- 
cording to  the  Western  and  Southern  cus- 
tom, the  country  people  flocked  into  town, 
that  he  was  put  forward  to  move  the  Jack- 
son  resolutions  at  a mass  meeting  of  Demo- 


14  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

crats  which  he  and  his  friend,  the  editor, 
had  contrived  to  bring  about.  There  was  a 
great  crowd.  Josiah  Lamborn,  an  orator 
of  some  reputation,  opposed  the  resolutions. 
Douglas  replied  in  an  hour’s  speech,  discom- 
fited Lamborn,  and  so  swept  his  audience 
that  they  seized  upon  him  and  bore  him  on 
their  shoulders  out  of  the  room  and  around 
the  public  square.  He  was  the  “ Little 
Giant  ” from  that  day,  and  the  speech  be- 
came a Democratic  tradition.  Of  course, 
in  after  years,  the  men  who  could  say  they 
heard  it  could  not  be  expected  to  admit  that 
he  ever  made  a better  speech  in  his  life. 

Within  a year,  he  was  so  well  known  that 
he  was  chosen  to  the  office  of  public  prose- 
cutor, or  district  attorney,  of  the  first  judi- 
cial circuit,  the  most  important  in  Illinois, 
and  his  successful  candidacy  for  the  place  is 
all  the  more  remarkable  because  he  was 
chosen  by  the  legislature,  and  not  by  his 
neighbors  of  the  circuit.  Moreover,  his  com- 
petitor, John  J.  Hardin,  was  one  of  the 
foremost  men  of  Illinois.  It  is  true  that 
Hardin  was  a Whig,  and  that  by  this  time 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  15 

there  was  a pretty  clear  division  between 
Whigs  and  Jackson  men  on  offices  as  well  as 
measures,  so  that  the  contest  was  a party  as 
well  as  a personal  affair  ; but  from  auction- 
eer’s clerk  to  district  attorney  was  a promotion 
hardly  to  be  won  hi  a year  by  a youth  of 
qualities  less  than  extraordinary. 

The  election  was  in  February,  1835,  and 
Douglas  held  the  office  the  better  part  of 
two  years.  A justice  of  the  supreme  court 
had  declared,  on  hearing  of  the  legislature’s 
choice,  that  the  stripling  could  not  fill  the 
place  because  he  was  no  lawyer  and  had  no 
law  books.  Nevertheless,  he  was  an  efficient 
prosecutor.  No  record  of  his  service  is  avail- 
able, but  there  was  a tradition  in  later  years 
that  not  one  of  his  indictments  was  quashed. 
Certainly,  his  work  in  the  courts  of  the  dis- 
trict increased  Iris  reputation  and  strength- 
ened his  hold  on  his  own  party.  In  the 
spring  of  1836,  the  Democrats  of  Morgan 
held  a convention  to  nominate  candidates 
for  the  six  seats  in  the  house  of  representa- 
tives to  which  the  county  was  entitled.  This 
was  a novel  proceeding,  for  the  system  of 


16  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


conventions  to  nominate  for  office  was  not 
yet  developed  ; tlie  first  of  the  national  party 
conventions  was  held  in  preparation  for  the 
presidential  campaign  of  1832.  Douglas 
Avas  a leader  in  the  movement,  and  as  a re- 
sult of  it  he  himself  was  drawn  into  the  con- 
test. Morgan  was  a Whig  county,  hut  the 
solid  front  of  the  Democracy  so  alarmed  the 
Whigs  that  they  also  abandoned  the  old 
plan  of  letting  any  number  of  candidates 
take  the  field  and  united  upon  a ticket  with 
Hardin  at  its  head.  No  man  on  the  Demo- 
cratic ticket  was  a match  for  Hardin.  One 
of  the  candidates  was  withdrawn,  therefore, 
and  Douglas  took  his  place,  and  he  and 
Hardin  canvassed  the  county  together  in  a 
series  of  joint  debates.  Mainly  through  his 
championship,  the  convention  plan  was  ap- 
proved, and  the  Democrats  won  the  election  ; 
hut  Hardin’s  vote  was  greater  than  the 
weakest  Democrat’s,  and  so  the  rivalry  beL-' 
tween  him  and  Douglas  was  continued  in 
the  legislature,  where  they  took  their  seats  f, 
in  December,  1836. 

In  that  same  house  of  representatives  were 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


17 


John  A.  McClernancl,  James  Shields,  Wil- 
liam A.  Eichardson,  and  other  men  who 
rose  to  national  distinction.  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, a Whig  representative  from.  Sangamon 
County,  was  already  well  known  for  his  un- 
gainly length  of  body,  for  his  habit  of  reason- 
ing in  parables  which  were  now  scriptural 
and  now  vulgar  to  the  point  of  obscenity, 
and  for  a quaint  and  rare  honesty.  He  was 
four  years  older  than  the  new  member  from 
Morgan,  and  nearly  two  feet  taller.  Doug- 
las, many  years  later,  declared  that  he  was 
drawn  to  Lincoln  by  a strong  sympathy,  for 
they  were  both  young  men  making  an  uphill 
struggle  in  life.  Lincoln,  at  his  first  sight 
of  Douglas,  during  the  contest  with  Hardin 
for  the  attorneyship,  pronounced  him  “ the 
least  man  he  ever  saw.” 

Douglas  was  the  youngest  member  of  an 
unusual  house,  but  he  at  once  took  his  place 
among  the  leaders.  When  the  governor’s 
message,  animadverting  severely  on  the  Pre- 
sident’s course  with  the  Bank,  brought  on 
a discussion  of  national  party  questions,  he 
and  Hardin  seem  to  have  won  the  chief  lion- 


18  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

ors  of  the  debate.  He  was  appointed  chair- 
man of  the  Committee  on  Petitions,  to  which/* 
numerous  applications  for  divorce  were  re- 
ferred, and  introduced  a resolution  which 
passed  and  which  put  an  end  to  divorces  by 
act  of  the  legislature.  On  the  great  question 
of  the  hour,  the  question  of  development  and 
internal  improvements,  he  declared  that  the 
State  ought  to  attempt  no  improvement  which 
it  could  not  afford  to  construct  and  to  own. 
He  favored  a few  specific  enterprises  and 
the  making  of  careful  surveys  and  estimates 
before  any  others  should  be  taken  up.  But 
it  was  the  very  height  of  “ flush  times  ” in 
Illinois,  and  the  legislature  added  millions  to 
the  vast  sums  in  which  the  State  was  already 
committed  to  the  support  of  canals,  rail- 
roads, river  improvements,  and  banks.  It 
was  but  a few  weeks  from  the  adjournment 
in  March  to  the  great  financial  panic  of  1837, 
which  crushed  every  one  of  the  state-aided 
banks,  stopped  the  railroad  building  and  river 
dredging,  and  finally  left  Illinois  burdened 
with  an  enormous  debt.  There  was  a special 
session  of  the  legislature  in  the  summer,  oeca- 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  19 

sionecl  by  the  depression  and  hard  times 
which  had  followed  so  hard  upon  the  flush 
times  of  the  winter,  but  Douglas  was  not 
there  to  tax  his  associates  with  their  unwis- 
dom. He  had  taken  another  step  in  his  un- 
exampled career  of  office-holding  by  accept- 
ing from  President  Van  Buren  the  office  of 
^register  of  public  lands  at  Spring-field,  the 
growing  town  in  Sangamon  County  which 
the  legislature  had  just  made  the  capital  of 
the  State,  and  where,  within  a few  years, 
Shields,  McClernand,  Lincoln,  and  other 
rising  young  men  were  gathered. 

From  this  time,  Douglas  and  Lincoln 
knew  each  other  well,  for  they  lived  to- 
gether several  years  in  an  atmosphere  of 
intimate  personal  scrutiny.  For  searching- 
study  of  one’s  fellows,  for  utter  disregard 
of  all  superficial  criteria  of  character  and 
conventional  standards  of  conduct,  there  is 
but  one  sort  of  life  to  be  compared  with 
the  life  of  a Southern  or  Western  town, 
and  that  is  the  life  of  students  in  a board- 
ing-school or  a small  college.  In  such 
communities  there  is  little  division  into 


20  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

classes,  as  of  rich  and  poor,  educated  and 
illiterate,  well  and  obscurely  horn.  On  the 
steps  of  the  court-house,  in  the  post-office 
while  the  daily  mail  is  sorted,  in  the  corner 
drug  store  on  Sundays,  in  lawyers’  offices, 
on  the  curbstone,  — wherever  a group  of 
men  is  assembled,  — there  is  the  freest  talk 
on  every  possible  subject ; and  the  lives  of 
men  are  open  to  their  fellows  as  they  cannot 
be  in  cities  by  reason  of  the  mass  or  in 
country  districts  by  reason  of  the  solitude 
and  the  shyness  which  solitude  breeds. 
Against  Douglas  there  was  the  presumption, 
which  evei’y  New  England  man  who  goes 
southward  or  westward  has  to  live  down, 
that  he  would  in  some  measure  hold  himself 
aloof  from  his  fellows.  But  the  prejudice  was 
quickly  dispelled.  No  man  entered  more 
readily  into  close  personal  relations  with 
whomsoever  he  encountered.  In  all  our 
accounts  of  him  he  is  represented  as  sur- 
rounded with  intimates.  Not  without  the 
power  of  impressing  men  with  his  dignity 
and  seriousness  of  purpose,  we  nevertheless 
hear  of  him  sitting  on  the  knee  of  an  emi- 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


21 


nent  judge  during  a recess  of  the  court ; 
dancing  from  end  to  end  of-  a dinner-table 
with  the  volatile  Shields  — the  same  who 
won  lam-els  in  the  Mexican  W ar,  a seat  in  the 
United  States  Senate,  and  the  closest  ap- 
proach anybody  ever  won  to  victory  in  battle 
over  Stonewall  Jackson  ; and  engaging,  de- 
spite his  height  of  five  feet  and  his  weight 
of  a hundred  pounds,  in  personal  encounters 
with  Stuart,  Lincoln's  athletic  law  partner, 
and  a corpulent  attorney  named  Francis. 

On  equal  terms  he  mingled  in  good- 
humored  rivalry  with  a group  of  uncom- 
monly resourceful  men,  and  he  passed  them 
all  in  the  race  for  advancement.  There  is 
some  reason  to  believe  that  Lincoln,  strange 
as  it  seems,  was  his  successful  rival  in  a love 
affair,  but  otherwise  Douglas  left  Lincoln 
far  behind.  Buoyant,  good-natured,  never 
easily  abashed,  his  maturity  and  savoir  faire 
were  accentuated  by  the  smallness  of  his 
stature.  His  blue  eyes  and  his  dark,  abun- 
dant hair  heightened  his  physical  charm  of 
boyishness  ; his  virile  movements,  his  face, 
heavy-browed,  round,  and  strong,  and  his 


22 


STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


well-formed,  uncommonly  large  liead  gave 
\hjm  an  aspect  of  intellectual  power.  He 
liad  a truly  Napoleonic  trick  of  attacking 
men  to  his  fortunes.  He  was  a born  leader, 
beyond  question  ; and  be  himself  does  not 
seem  ever  to  have  doubted  bis  fitness  to 
lead,  or  ever  to  have  agonized  over  the  choice 
of  a path  and  the  responsibilities  of  leader- 
ship. Principles  he  had  — the  principles 
of  Jefferson  and  Jackson  as  he  understood 
them.  These,  apparently,  he  held  sufficient 
for  every  problem  and  every  emergency  of 
political  life. 

He  believed  in  party  organization  quite 
as  firmly  as  he  believed  in  pai'ty  principles, 
and  in  the  summer  of  1837  he  had  a hand 
in  building  up  the  machinery  of  conventions 
and  committees  through  which  the  Illinois 
Democrats  have  governed  themselves  ever 
since.  He  defended  Van  Buren’s  plan  of  a 
sub-treasury  when  many  even  of  those  who 
had  supported  Jackson’s  financial  measures 
wavered  in  the  face  of  the  disfavor  into 
which  hard  times  had  brought  the  party 
in  power,  and  in  November,  although  the 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


23 


Springfield  congressional  district,  even  be- 
fore the  panic,  liad  shown  a Whig  majority 
of  3000,  be  accepted  the  Democratic  nomi- 
nation for  the  seat  in  Congress  to  be  filled 
at  the  election  in  August,  1838,  and  threw 
himself  with  the  utmost  ardor  into  the  can- 
vass. The  district  was  the  largest  in  the 
whole  country,  for  it  included  all  the  north- 
ern counties  of  the  State.  His  opponent 
was  John  T.  Stuart,  Lincoln's  law  partner, 
and  for  five  months  the  two  spoke  six  days 
every  week  without  covering  the  whole  of 
the  great  region  they  aspired  to  represent. 
The  northern  counties  had  been  filling  up 
with  immigrants,  and  more  than  36,000  votes 
were  cast.  Many  ballots  were  thrown  out 
on  technicalities  ; most  of  the  election  offi- 
cials were  Whigs.  After  weeks  of  uncer- 
tainty, Stuart  was  declared  elected  by  a 
majority  of  five.  The  moral  effect,  however, 
was  a triumph  for  Douglas,  who  at  the  time 
of  his  nomination  was  not  of  the  age  required 


of  congressmen. 

He  announced  that  he  would  now  devote 
himself  to  his  profession.  But  it  was  by  this 


24  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

time  very  difficult,  even  if  lie  so  wished,  to 
withdraw  from  politics.  He  was  constantly 
in  council  with  the  leaders  of  his  party, 
and  belonged  to  a sort  of  “ third  house  ” at 
Springfield  which  nowadays  would  probably 
be  called  a lobby.  During  the  winter  there 
was  an  angry  controversy  between  the  Demo- 
cratic governor  and  the  Whig  senate  over 
the  question  of  the  governor’s  right  to  ap- 
point a secretary  of  state,  the  senate  re- 
fusing to  confirm  his  nomination  of  McCler- 
nand  on  the  ground  that  the  office  was  not 
vacant.  The  question  was  brought  before 
the  supreme  court,  whose  Whig  majority,  by 
deciding  against  the  governor,  strengthened 
a growing  feeling  of  discontent  with  the 
whole  judiciary  among  the  Democrats,  and 
Douglas  took  strong  ground  in  favor  of  re- 
organizing the  court.  In  March,  addressing 
a great  meeting  at  Springfield,  he  defended 
the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  of 
1798,  and  when  the  presidential  campaign 
opened  in  November  he  had  a debate  with 
Lincoln  and  other  Whig  orators.  He  was, 
in  fact,  the  leading  Democratic  orator 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  25 

throughout  the  campaign  in  Illinois,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  his  enthusiasm  and 
his  shrewdness  had  much  to  do  with  the  re- 
sult there.  Of  all  the  Northern  States,  only 
Illinois  and  New  Hampshire  went  for  Van 
Buren. 

Meanwhile,  however,  he  had  practiced 
law  with  such  success  that  no  account  of  the 
Illinois  bar  of  those  days  omits  his  name 
from  the  list  of  eminent  attorneys.  It  was 
noted  that  whereas  Lincoln  was  never  very 
successful  save  in  those  cases  where  his 
client’s  cause  was  just,  a client  with  but  a 
slender  claim  upon  the  court’s  favor  found 
Douglas  a far  better  advocate.  He  never 
seems  to  have  given  much  time  to  the  read- 
ing of  law  or  to  the  ordinary  drudgery  of 
preparing  cases  for  trial,  but  he  mastered 
the  main  facts  of  his  cases  with  the  utmost 
facility,  and  his  mind  went  at  once  to  the 
points  that  were  sure  to  affect  the  decision. 
Early  in  his  experience  as  a lawyer  he  had 
to  be  content  with  fees  that  seem  absurdly 
small ; once,  he  rode  from  Springfield  to 
Bloomington  to  argue  a case,  and  got  but 


26  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

five  dollars  for  liis  services.  But  lie  was 
a first-rate  man  of  business,  and  soon  liad  a 
good  income  from  his  profession. 

In  January,  1841,  the  legislature,  now 
Democratic  in  both  branches,  removed  the 
Whig  incumbent  from  the  office  of  secretary 
of  state,  and  the  governor  at  once  appointed 
Douglas  to  succeed  him.  That  office,  how- 
ever, he  held  less  than  a month,  for  the 
legislature  had  also  reconstructed  the  su- 
preme court  in  such  a way  as  to  increase  the 
number  of  Judges,  and  in  February,  being 
then  less  than  twenty-eight  years  old,  he 
was  named  for  one  of  the  new  places.  One 
of  the  reasons  why  the  court  was  recon- 
structed was  its  opposition  to  the  Democratic 
position  on  the  franchise  question.  Douglas, 
arguing  a famous  franchise  case  before  it, 
had  made  himself  the  champion  of  unnatu- 
ralized inhabitants  claiming  the  right  to 
vote,  and  had  thus  established  himself  in  the 
good-will  of  a large  and  increasing  constitu- 
ency throughout  the  State.  Under  the  new 
law,  each  justice  was  assigned  to  a particu- 
lar circuit,  — Douglas  to  the  westernmost, 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST  27 

whose  principal  town  was  Quincy,  on  the 
Illinois  River,  where  he  made  his  home. 

The  Mormon  settlement  of  Nauvoo  was 
in  that  circuit,  and  the  most  interesting  of 
all  the  cases  brought  before  Judge  Douglas 
grew  out  of  the  troubles  between  the  followers 
of  Joe  Smith  and  their  neighbors.  On  one 
occasion,  Joe  Smith  was  himself  on  trial,  and 
the  Christian  populace  of  the  neighborhood, 
long  incensed  against  him  and  his  people, 
broke  into  the  court-room  clamoring  for  his 
life.  The  sheriff,  a feeble-bodied  and  spirit- 
less official,  showed  signs  of  yielding,  and  the 
judge,  promptly  assuming  a power  not  vested 
in  his  office,  appointed  a stalwart  Kentuckian 
sheriff,  and  ordered  him  to  summon  a posse 
and  clear  the  room.  By  these  means  the 
defendant’s  life  was  saved,  and  Douglas,  not- 
withstanding various  decisions  of  his  against 
them,  earned  the  gratitude  of  the  religious 
enthusiasts.  There  is  a story  that  some  years 
later,  when  he  was  no  longer  a judge,  but 
a major  in  a militia  regiment  sent  on  an 
expedition  against  Nauvoo,  he  was  ordered 
to  take  a hundred  men  and  arrest  the  “ twelve 


28  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


apostles.”  Tlie  Mormons,  outnumbering  the 
militia,  were  fortified  for  defense.  Major 
Douglas,  however,  proceeded  alone  into  their 
lines,  persuaded  the  twelve  to  enter  their 
apostolic  coach  and  come  with  him  to  the 
Christian  camp,  and  so  brought  about  an 
agreement  which  prevented  a fight. 

Both  as  a judge  and  as  a member  of  the 
council  of  revision  Douglas  stood  out  with 
commendable  firmness  against  the  popular 
feeling,  strong  throughout  the  country  during 
the  hard  times,  and  which  in  some  of  the 
States  got  a complete  ascendency  over  courts 
and  legislatures,  in  favor  of  the  relief  of 
debtors.  He  enforced  the  old  laws  for  the 
collection  of  debts,  and  he  baulked  several 
legislative  schemes  to  defraud  creditors  of 
their  due  by  declaring  the  new  laws  uncon- 
stitutional. For  the  rest,  his  decisions  have 
seemed  to  competent  critics  to  show  that  he 
possessed  unusual  legal  ability  and  grasp  of 
principles  and  a corresponding  power  of 
statement,  scant  as  his  legal  training  was. 

According  to  the  American  usage,  he 
was  “ Judge  Douglas  ” all  the  rest  of  his 


YOUTH  AND  THE  WEST 


29 


life,  but  tbe  state  bench  no  more  satisfied  his 
ambition  than  the  other  state  offices  he  had 
held.  In  December,  1842,  when  the  legisla- 
ture proceeded  to  ballot  for  a United  States 
senator,  his  name  was  presented,  though 
again  his  age  fell  short  of  the  legal  require- 
ment, and  on  the  last  ballot  he  had  fifty-one 
votes  against  the  fifty-six  which  elected  his 
successful  competitor.  The  next  year,  be- 
ing nominated  for  the  lower  house  of  Con- 
gress, he  accepted,  and  at  once  resigned  his 
place  on  the  bench,  though  the  district  had 
a Whig  complexion.  At  the  end  of  a can- 
vass which  left  both  himself  and  his  oppo- 
nent, Browning,  seriously  ill,  he  was  elected 
by  a majority  of  several  hundred. 

On  his  way  to  Washington,  he  visited 
Cleveland,  where  his  westward  journey  had 
come  so  near  an  abortive  ending,  and  then 
his  home-folk  at  Canandaigua.  He  was  but 
thirty  years  old,  yet  he  had  held  five  impor- 
tant political  offices,  he  had  risen  to  high 
rank  in  his  profession,  he  was  the  leader  of 
the  dominant  party  in  a great  State  ; and  all 
this  he  had  done  alone,  unaided.  Few  aged 


30  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

men  have  brought  back  such  laurels  from 
their  Western  fortune-seeking.  In  Decem- 
ber, 1843,  he  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  began  to  display  before 
the  whole  country  the  same  brilliant  spectacle 
of  daring,  energy,  and  success  which  had 
captivated  the  people  of  Illinois. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE 

It  was  the  aggressive  energy  of  the  man, 
unrestrained  by  such  formality  as  was  still 
observed  by  the  public  men  of  the  older 
Eastern  communities,  which  most  impressed 
those  who  have  left  on  record  their  judg- 
ments of  the  young  Western  congressman. 
The  aged  Adams,  doubtless  the  best  repre- 
sentative of  the  older  school  in  either  branch 
of  Congress,  gave  a page  of  his  diary  to  one 
of  Douglas’s  early  speeches.  “ His  face  was 
convulsed,”  — so  the  merciless  diary  runs,  — 
“ his  gesticulation  frantic,  and  he  lashed 
himself  into  such  a heat  that  if  his  body  had 
been  made  of  combustible  matter  it  would 
have  burnt  out.  In  the  midst  of  his  roaring, 
to  save  himself  from  choking,  he  stripped 
and  cast  away  his  cravat,  unbuttoned  his 
waistcoat,  and  had  the  air  and  aspect  of  a 
half-naked  pugilist.  And  this  man  comes 


32  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

from  a judicial  bench,  and  passes  for  an 
eloquent  orator ! ” On  another  occasion, 
the  same  critic  tells  us,  Douglas  “ raved  an 
hour  about  democracy  and  anglophobia  and 
universal  empire.”  Adams  had  been  pro- 
fessor of  rhetoric  and  oratory  at  Harvard 
College,  and  he  was  the  last  man  in  the 
country  to  appreciate  an  oratorical  manner 
that  departed  from  the  established  rides  and 
traditions  of  the  art.  Ampere,  a French 
traveler,  thought  Douglas  a perfect  repre- 
sentative of  the  energetic  builders  of  the 
W estern  commonwealths,  and  predicted  that 
he  would  come  into  power  when  it  should  be 
the  turn  of  the  West  to  dominate  the  coun- 
try. “ Small,  black,  stocky,”  so  this  observer 
described  him,  “ his  speech  is  full  of  ner- 
vous power,  his  action  simple  and  strong.” 
Douglas,  however,  quickly  adapted  himself 
to  his  new  environment,  — no  man  in  the 
country  excelled  him  in  that  art,  — and  took 
on  all  the  polish  which  the  Washington  of 
that  day  demanded,  without  any  loss  of  fight- 
ing spirit  or  any  abandonment  of  his  demo- 
cratic manners  and  principles. 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  33 


He  soon  got  a good  opportunity  to  plant 
laimself  on  a powerful  popular  sentiment  by 
urging,  in  a really  excellent  speech,  that  the 
country  should  repay  to  the  aged  Jackson 
the  fine  which  had  been  imposed  upon  him 
for  contempt  of  court  during  the  defense  of 
New  Orleans.  An  experienced  opponent 
found  him  ready  with  a taking  retort  to 
every  interruption.  It  being  objected  that 
there  was  absolutely  no  precedent  for  refund- 
ing the  fine,  “ I presume,”  he  replied,  “ that 
no  case  can  be  found  on  record,  or  traced  by 
tradition,  where  a fine,  imposed  upon  a gen- 
eral for  saving  his  country,  at  the  peril  of 
his  fife  and  reputation,  has  ever  been  re- 
funded.” When  he  visited  The  Hermitage 
during  the  following  summer,  Jackson  sin- 
gled him  out  of  a distinguished  party  and 
thanked  him,  not  without  reason,  for  defend- 
ing his  course  at  New  Orleans  better  than 
he  himself  had  ever  been  able  to  defend  it. 
Douglas  won  further  distinction  during  the 
session  by  defending,  in  a report  from  the 
committee  on  elections,  the  right  of  the  sev- 
eral States  to  determine  how  their  represent- 


34  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


atives  in  Congress  should  be  chosen.  Later, 
in  a debate  with  John  J.  Hardin,  his  rival 
in  Congress  as  in  the  Illinois  legislature,  he 
contrasted  the  Whig  and  Democratic  posi- 
tions on  the  questions  of  the  day  with  so 
much  force  and  skill  that  the  speech  was 
used  as  the  principal  Democratic  document 
in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1844. 

In  Congress,  distinction  does  not  always, 
or  usually,  imply  power  ; but  Douglas  was 
consummately  fit  for  the  sort  of  struggling 
by  which  things  are  in  fact  accomplished  at 
Washington.  Whatever  the  matter  in  hand, 
his  mind  always  moved  with  lightning  rapid- 
ity to  positive  views.  He  was  never  without 
a clear  purpose,  and  he  had  the  skill  and 
the  temper  to  manage  men.  He  knew  how 
to  conciliate  opponents,  to  impress  the 
thoughtful,  to  threaten  the  timid,  to  button- 
hole and  flatter  and  cajole.  He  breathed 
freely  the  heated  air  of  lobbies  and  com- 
mittee rooms.  Fast  as  his  reputation  grew, 
his  actual  importance  in  legislation  grew 
faster  still.  At  the  beginning  of  his  second 
term  he  was  appointed  chairman  of  the 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  35 


. House  Committee  on  Territories,  and  so  was 
charged  in  an  especial  way  with  the  affairs 
of  the  remoter  W est.  In  the  course  of  that 
service,  he  framed  many  laws  which  have 
affected  very  notably  the  development  of  our 
younger  commonwealths.  He  was  particu- 
larly opposed  to  the  policy  of  massing  the 
Indians  in  reservations  west  of  the  Missis- 
' sippi,  fearing  that  the  new  Northwest,  the 
Oregon  country,  over  which  we  were  still  in 
controversy  with  Great  Britain,  would  thus 
he  isolated.  To  prevent  this,  he  introduced 
during  Iris  first  term  a bill  to  organize  into 
a territory  that  part  of  the  Louisiana  Pur- 
chase which  lay  north  and  west  of  Missouri. 
As  yet,  however,  there  were  scarcely  any 
white  settlers  in  the  region,  and  no  interest 
could  be  enlisted  in  support  of  the  bill.  But 
he  renewed  his  motion  year  after  year  until 
finally,  as  we  shall  see,  he  made  it  the  most 
celebrated  measure  of  his  time. 

His  advocacy  of  the  internal  improve- 
ments needed  for  the  development  of  the 
West  brought  him  in  opposition  to  a power- 
ful element  in  his  own  party.  Adams,  writ- 


36  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

ing  in  his  diary  under  date  of  April  17, 
1844,  says  : “The  Western  harbor  bill  was 
taken  up,  and  the  previous  question  was 
withdrawn  for  the  homunculus  Douglas  to 
poke  out  a speech  in  favor  of  the  constitu- 
tionality of  appropriations  for  the  improve- 
ment of  Western  rivers  and  harbors.  The 
debate  was  continued  between  the  conflict- 
ing absurdities  of  the  Southern  Democracy, 
which  is  slavery,  and  the  W estern  Demo- 
cracy, which  is  knavery.”  Under  the  lead- 
ership of  Jackson  and  other  Southerners,  the 
Democrats,  notwithstanding  their  long  as- 
cendency, had  adhered  to  their  position  on 
internal  improvements  more  consistently, 
perhaps,  than  to  any  other  of  the  contentions 
which  they  had  made  before  they  came  into 
power.  Douglas  did  not,  indeed,  commit 
himself  to  that  interpretation  of  the  Consti- 
tution which  justified  appropriations  for  any 
enterprise  which  could  be  considered  a con- 
tribution to  the  “ general  welfare,”  and  he 
protested  against  various  items  in  river  and 
harbor  bills.  But  as  a rule  he  voted  for 
the  bills. 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  37 


He  was  particularly  interested  in  the 
scheme  for  building  a railroad  which  should 
rim  north  and  south  the  entire  length  of 
Illinois,  and  favored  a grant  of  public  lands 
to  aid  the  State  in  the  enterprise.  For 
years,  however,  he  had  to  contend  with  a 
corporation  which  had  got  from  the  State  a 
charter  for  such  a railroad  and  was  now  try- 
ing to  get  help  from  Congress.  In  1843, 
and  for  several  sessions  thereafter,  bills  were 
introduced  to  give  aid  directly  to  the  Great 
Western  Railway  Company,  and  it  was 
mainly  the  work  of  Douglas  that  finally 
secured  a majority  in  Congress  for  the  plan 
of  granting  lands  to  the  State,  and  not  to 
the  company.  That  was  in  1851.  To  his 
chagrin,  however,  the  promoters  of  the  com- 
pany then  persuaded  the  Illinois  legislature 
to  pass  a bill  transferring  to  them  what- 
ever lands  Congress  might  grant  to  the 
State  for  the  railroad.  He  at  once  sent 
for  Holbrook,  the  leading  man  in  the  com- 
pany, and  informed  him  that  no  bill  would 
be  permitted  to  pass  until  he  and  his  as- 
sociates should  first  execute  a release  of  all 


38  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

the  rights  they  had  obtained  from  the  leg- 
islature. Such  a release  they  were  at  last 
forced  to  sign,  the  bill  passed,  and  the 
Illinois  Central  was  built.  It  became  an 
important  agency  in  the  development,  not 
of  Illinois  merely,  but  of  the  whole  Mis- 
sissippi Valley ; and  it  is  the  most  notable 
material  result  of  Douglas’s  skill  in  legis- 
lation. But  throughout  the  whole  course 
of  his  service  at  Washington  he  never  neg- 
lected, in  his  concern  about  the  great  na- 
tional questions  with  which  his  name  is  for- 
ever associated,  the  material  interests  of 
the  people  whom  he  especially  represented. 
His  district  and  his  State  never  had  cause  to 
complain  of  his  devotion  to  his  party  and  his 
country. 

But  the  questions  which  had  the  foremost 
place  while  he  was  a member  of  the  lower 
house  were  questions  of  our  foreign  relations, 
and  as  it  happened  they  were  questions  to 
which  he  coidd  give  himself  freely  without 
risking  his  distinctive  role  as  the  champion 
of  the  newer  West.  The  Oregon  boundary 
dispute  and  the  proposed  annexation  of 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  39 

Texas  were  uppermost  in  the  campaign  of 
1844,  and  on  both  it  was  competent  for  him 
to  argue  that  an  aggressive  policy  was  de- 
manded by  Western  interests  and  Western 
sentiment.  It  was  in  discussing  the  Oregon 
boundary  that  he  first  took  the  attitude  of 
bitter  opposition  to  all  European,  and  par- 
ticularly to  all  English  interference  in  the 
affairs  of  the  American  continents  which  he 
steadily  maintained  thereafter.  The  long- 
standing agreement  with  Great  Britain  for 
joint  occupation  of  the  Oregon  country  he 
characterized  as  in  practice  an  agreement  for 
non-occupation.  Arguing  in  favor  of  giving- 
notice  of  the  termination  of  the  convention, 
he  shrewdly  pointed  out  that  as  the  British 
settlers  were  for  the  most  part  fur-traders 
and  the  American  settlements  were  agri- 
cultural, we  would  “ squat  them  out  ” if  no 
hindrance  were  put  upon  the  westward 
movement  of  our  pioneers.  He  would  at 
once  organize  a territorial  government  for 
Oregon,  and  take  measures  to  protect  it ; 
if  Great  Britain  threatened  war,  he  would 
put  the  country  in  a state  of  defense.  “ If 


40  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


war  comes,”  he  cried,  “let  it  come.  We 
may  regret  the  necessity  which  produced  it, 
but  when  it  does  come,  I would  administer 
to  our  citizens  Hannibal’s  oath  of  eternal 
enmity.  I would  blot  out  the  lines  on  the 
map  which  now  mark  our  territorial  bound- 
aries on  this  continent,  and  make  the  area 
of  liberty  as  broad  as  the  continent  itself.” 
He  even  broke  with  the  Polk  administration 
when  it  retreated  from  the  advanced  posi- 
tion which  the  party  had  taken  during  the 
campaign,  and  was  one  of  a hardy  ten  who, 
in  the  debate  over  the  resolutions  that  led 
to  the  final  settlement,  voted  for  a substi- 
tute declaration  that  the  question  was  “no 
longer  a subject  of  negotiation  and  com- 
promise.” There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
his  hostility  to  England,  as  well  as  his  ro- 
bust Americanism,  commended  him  at  that 
time  to  the  mass  of  his  countrymen  every- 
where but  in  the  commercial  East. 

On  the  annexation  of  Texas,  popular  sen- 
timent, even  in  his  own  party,  was  far  from 
unanimous,  but  the  party  was,  nevertheless, 
thoroughly  committed  to  it.  After  the  elec- 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  41 


tion,  when  it  appeared  that  Tyler  was  quite 
as  favorable  to  the  measure  as  his  incoming 
Democratic  successor,  Douglas  was  one  of 
those  who  came  forward  with  a new  plan  for 
annexing  territory  by  joint  resolution  of 
Congress,  and  in  January,  1845,  he  stated 
as  well  as  it  ever  has  been  stated  the  argu- 
ment that  Texas  became  ours  by  the  Louisi- 
ana Purchase  of  1803,  and  was  without  the 
consent  of  her  people  retroceded  to  Spain  by 
the  treaty  of  1819.  When  President  Polk 
sent  in  his  announcement  that  war  existed 
by  the  act  of  Mexico,  Douglas  was  ready 
with  a defense  of  that  doubtful  casus  belli 
and  an  ardent  support  of  the  army  bill  which 
followed.  His  speech  on  the  army  bill  was 
an  admirable  exhibition  of  his  powers,  and 
it  was  the  best  speech  on  that  side  in  the  de- 
bate. Adams,  who  interrupted  him,  was  in- 
stantly put  upon  the  defensive  by  a citation 
from  the  argument  which  he  himself,  as 
Secretary  of  State,  had  made  in  1819  for 
the  American  claim  to  the  line  of  the  Rio 
del  Norte.  When  he  asked  if  the  treaty 
of  peace  and  boundaries  concluded  by  Mex- 


42  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


ico  and  Texas  in  1836  had  not  since  been 
discarded  by  the  Mexican  government,  Dong- 
las  retorted  that  he  was  unaware  of  any 
treaty  ever  made  by  a Mexican  government 
which  was  not  either  violated  or  repudiated. 
Adams  came  finally  to  acknowledge  the  un- 
usual powers  of  the  Western  “ homuncu- 
lus ” as  a debater. 


But  the  reputation  and  the  influence  won 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  were  to  be  ex- 
tended in  a moi’e  favorable  arena.  In  1846, 
Douglas  being  now  thirty-three  years  of  age, 
the  Illinois  legislature  elected  him  United 
States  senator  for  the  six  years  beginning 
March  4,  1847.  In  April,  1847,  he  was 
married  to  Martha,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Robert  Martin,  of  Rockingham,  N.  C.,  a 
wealthy  planter  and  a large  slaveholder. 
Active  as  he  continued  to  be  in  politics,  he 
found  time  for  business  as  well  as  love-mak- 
ing. He  invested  boldly  in  the  lands  over 
which  Chicago  was  now  spreading  in  its  rapid 
growth  and  made  the  young  city  his  home. 
His  investments  were  fortunate,  and  within 
a few  years  he  was  a wealthy  man  according 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  43 


to  tlie  standard  of  those  times.  He  used 
his  wealth  freely  in  hospitality,  in  charity, 
and  in  the  furtherance  of  his  political  enter- 
prises. In  the  year  1856,  the  corner-stone 
of  the  University  of  Chicago  was  laid  on  land 
which  he  had  given. 

The  assembly  of  which  Douglas  was  now 
a member  had  gradually  risen  to  a higher 
place  in  our  system  than  the  founders  in- 
tended. The  House,  partly  by  reason  of  its 
exclusive  right  to  originate  measures  of  a 
certain  class,  partly  because  it  was  felt  to  be 
more  accurately  representative  of  the  people, 
had  at  first  a sort  of  ascendency.  The  great 
constructive  measures  of  the  first  administra- 
tion were  House  measures.  Even  so  late  as 
Jefferson’s  and  Madison’s  administrations, 
one  must  look  oftenest  to  the  records  of  that 
chamber  for  the  main  lines  of  legislative  his- 
tory. But  in  Jackson’s  time  the  Senate 
profited  by  its  comparative  immunity  from 
sudden  political  changes,  by  its  veto  on  ap- 
pointments, and  by  the  greater  freedom  of 
debate  which  its  limited  membership  permit- 
ted. It  came  to  stand,  as  the  House  could 


U STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

not,  for  conservatism,  for  deliberation,  for 
independence  of  the  executive.  The  advan- 
tage thus  gained  was  increased  as  the  growth 
of  the  Speaker’s  power  into  a virtual  premier- 
ship and  the  development  of  the  committee 
system  undermined  the  importance  of  the 
individual  representative,  and  as  the  more 
rapid  increase  of  population  in  the  free 
States  destroyed  in  the  House  that  balance 
of  the  sections  which  in  the  Senate  was  still 
carefully  maintained.  Moreover,  the  coun- 
try no  longer  sent  its  strongest  men  into  the 
White  House,  and  the  Supreme  Court  was 
no  longer  favorable  to  that  theory  of  the 
government  which,  as  Marshall  expounded 
it,  had  tended  so  markedly  to  elevate  the 
court  itself.  The  upper  house  had  gained 
not  merely  as  against  the  lower,  but  as 
against  the  executive  and  the  judiciary.  The 
ablest  and  most  experienced  statesmen  were 
apt  to  be  senators ; and  the  Senate  was  the 
true  battleground  in  a contest  that  was  be- 
ginning to  dwarf  all  others.  From  the  begin- 
ing  to  the  end  of  Douglas’s  service  there, 
saving  a brief,  delusive  interval  after  the 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  45 


Compromise  of  1850,  the  slavery  question 
in  its  territorial  phase  was  constantly  upper- 
most, and  in  the  Senate,  if  anywhere,  those 
measures  must  be  devised,  those  compro- 
mises agreed  on,  which  should  save  the  coun- 
try from  disunion  or  war.  There  was  open 
to  him,  therefore,  a path  to  eminence  which, 
difficult  as  it  might  prove,  was  at  least  a 
plain  one.  To  win  among  his  fellows  in  the 
Senate  a leadership  such  as  he  had  readily 
won  among  his  fellows  at  school,  at  J ackson- 
ville,  at  Springfield,  in  the  legislature  and 
the  Democratic  organization  of  Illinois,  and 
such  as  he  was  rising  to  in  the  lower  house 
when  he  left  it,  and  then  to  find  and  estab- 
lish the  right  policy  with  slavery,  and  partic- 
ularly with  slavery  in  the  Territories  — there 
lay  his  path.  It  was  a task  that  demanded 
the  highest  powers,  a public  service  ade- 
quate to  the  loftiest  patriotism.  How  he 
did,  in  fact,  attempt  it,  how  nearly  he  suc- 
ceeded in  it,  and  why  he  failed  in  it,  are 
the  inquiries  with  which  any  study  of  his 
life  must  be  chiefly  concerned. 

But  Douglas  was  too  alert  and  alive  to 


46  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

limit  his  share  in  legislation  to  a single 
subject  or  class  of  subjects.  Save  that  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  taken  up  the  tariff 
question  in  any  conspicuous  way,  he  had  a 
leading  part  in  all  the  important  discussions 
of  his  time,  whether  in  the  Senate  or  before 
the  people.  Unquestionably,  his  would  he 
the  best  name  to  choose  if  one  were  attempt- 
ing- to  throw  into  biographical  form  a politi- 
cal history  of  the  period  of  his  senatorship. 

The  very  day  he  took  his  seat,  he  was  ap- 
pointed chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee 
on  Territories,  and  so  kept  the  role  of  sponsor 
for  young  commonwealths  which  he  had  be- 
gun to  play  in  the  House.  No  other  public 
man  has  ever  had  so  much  to  do  with  the 
organizing  of  Territories  and  the  admitting 
of  States  into  the  Union  ; probably  no  other 
man  ever  so  completely  mastered  all  the  de- 
tails of  such  legislation.  He  reported  the 
bills  by  which  Utah,  New  Mexico,  Washing- 
ton, Kansas,  Nebraska,  Oregon,  and  Minne- 
sota became  Territories,  and  those  by  which 
Texas,  Iowa,  Florida,  California,  Wisconsin, 
Oregon,  and  Minnesota  became  States.  His 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  47 


familiarity  with  all  questions  concerning  the 
public  domain  was  not  less  remarkable.  In 
dealing  with  both  subjects,  he  seems  always 
to  have  been  guided  by  his  confidence  in  the 
Western  people  themselves.  He  was  for  a 
liberal  policy  with  individual  settlers,  holding 
that  the  government,  in  disposing  of  its  lands, 
should  aim  at  development  and  not  at  profit ; 
and  he  was  no  less  liberal  in  his  view  of  the 
rights  and  privileges  with  which  each  new 
political  community  ought  to  be  invested. 
As  to  the  lands,  he  held  to  such  a policy  as 
looked  forward  to  the  time  when  they  should 
be  turned  into  farms  and  towns  and  cities. 
As  to  the  government  of  the  Territories,  he 
held  to  such  a policy  with  them  as  looked 
constantly  forward  to  their  becoming  States, 
and  his  theory  was  that  all  the  powers  of 
the  general  government  in  reference  to  them 
were  based  on  its  power  to  admit  States 
into  the  Union.  To  that  rule  of  construc- 
tion, however,  he  made  a very  notable  ex- 
ception. Declaring  that  the  Mormons  were 
for  the  most  part  aliens  by  birth,  that  they 
were  trying  to  subvert  the  authority  of  the 


48  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

United  States,  that  they  themselves  were 
unfit  for  citizenship  and  their  community 
unfit  for  membership  in  the  Union,  he  fa- 
vored the  repeal  of  the  act  by  which  the 
territorial  government  of  Utah  was  set  up. 
He  went  farther,  and  maintained  that  only 
such  territory  as  is  set  apart  to  form  new 
States  must  he  governed  in  accordance  with 
those  constitutional  clauses  which  relate  to 
the  admission  of  States,  and  that  territory 
acquired  or  held  for  other  purposes  could 
be  governed  quite  without  reference  to  any 
rights  which  through  statehood,  or  the  expec- 
tation of  statehood,  its  inhabitants  might 
claim.  This  theory  of  his  has  assumed  in 
our  later  history  an  interest  and  importance 
far  beyond  any  it  had  at  the  time ; but 
Douglas  in  that  and  in  many  other  of  his 
speeches  clearly  had  in  mind  just  such  exi- 
gencies as  have  brought  us  to  a practical  adop- 
tion of  his  view. 

His  interest  in  the  government’s  efforts 
to  develop  the  country,  and  particularly  the 
West,  by  building  highways,  dredging  rivers, 
and  deepening  harbors,  did  not  diminish, 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  49 


and  lie  made  more  than  one  effort  to  bring 
design  and  system  into  that  legislation.  Al- 
ways mindful  of  results,  he  pointed  out  that 
the  conditions  under  which  the  river  and 
harbor  bills  were  framed,  — the  pressure 
upon  every  representative  and  -senator  to 
stand  up  for  the  interests  of  his  constituents, 
and  the  failure  to  fix  anywhere  the  responsi- 
bility for  a general  plan,  — made  it  inevita- 
ble that  such  measures  would  either  fail  to 
pass  or  fail  of  their  objects  if  they  did  pass. 
He  suggested,  in  1852,  a plan  which  a year 
or  two  later,  in  a long  letter  to  Governor 
Matteson,  of  Illinois,  he  explained  and  ad- 
vocated with  much  force.  It  was  for  Con- 
gress to  consent,  as  the  Constitution  provided 
it  might,  and  as  in  particular  cases  it  had 
consented,  to  the  imposition  by  the  States  of 
tonnage  duties,  the  proceeds  to  be  used  in 
deepening  harbors.  The  scheme  commended 
itself  for  many  practical  reasons  ; and  it  was 
more  consonant  with  Democratic  theory  than 
the  practice  of  direct  appropriations  by  Con- 
gress. 

However,  in  his  ardent  advocacy  of  a Pa- 


50 


STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


cific  railroad,  Douglas  made  no  question  of 
the  government’s  powers  in  that  connection. 
True,  in  1858,  the  committee  of  which  he 
was  a member  threw  the  bill  into  the  form 
of  a mail  contract  in  order  that  it  might  not 
run  counter  to  the  state-rights  views  of 
senators,  but  he  seems  to  have  favored 
every  one  of  the  numerous  measures  look- 
ing to  the  building  of  the  road  which  had 
any  prospect  of  success.  At  first,  he  was 
for  three  different  roads,  a northern,  a cen- 
tral, and  a southern,  but  it  was  soon  clear 
that  Congress  would  not  go  into  the  mat- 
ter on  so  generous  a scale.  Arguing,  then, 
for  a central  line,  he  used  a language  char- 
acteristic of  his  course  on  all  questions  that 
arose  between  the  sections.  “ The  North,” 
he  said,  “ by  bending  a little  down  South, 
can  join  it ; and  the  South,  by  leaning  a 
little  to  the  North,  can  unite  with  it,  too  ; 
and  our  Southern  friends  ought  to  be  able 
to  bend  and  lean  a little,  as  well  as  to  require 
us  to  bend  and  lean  all  the  time,  in  order  to 
join  them.” 

His  practical  instinct  and  his  democratic 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  51 


inclinations  were  both  apparent  in  the  plan 
which  he  proposed  in  1855  for  the  relief  of 
the  Supreme  Court.  A bill  reported  by  the 
Committee  on  the  Judiciary  freed  the  jus- 
tices from  their  duties  on  circuit  and  provided 
for  eleven  circuit  judges.  Douglas  proposed, 
as  a substitute,  to  divide  the  country  into 
nine  circuits,  and  to  establish  in  each  of  these 
a court  of  appeals  which  should  sit  once  a 
year  and  which  should  consist  of  one  supreme 
court  justice  and  the  district  judges  of  the 
circuit,  the  assignment  of  each  justice  to  be 
changed  from  year  to  year.  His  aim  was 
twofold  : to  relieve  the  Supreme  Court  by 
making  the  circuit  courts  the  final  resort  in 
all  cases  below  a certain  importance,  and  to 
keep  the  justices  in  touch  with  the  people, 
and  familiar  with  the  courts,  the  procedure, 
and  the  local  laws  in  all  parts  of  the  country. 
The  scheme,  though  different  in  details,  is  in 
its  main  features  strikingly  like  the  system  of 
circuit  court  of  appeals  which  was  adopted 
in  1891. 

But  the  questions,  apart  from  that  of 
slavery,  on  which  Douglas’s  course  has  the 


52  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

most  interest  for  a later  generation  were  still 
questions  of  our  foreign  relations.  On  the 
Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty,  on  the  Treaty  of 
Peace  with  Mexico,  on  the  Oregon  Boundary 
Treaty  of  1853,  on  the  negotiations  for  the 
purchase  of  Cuba,  on  the  filibuster  expedi- 
\s  tions  of  1858,  and  the  controversy  of  that 
year  over  Great  Britain’s  reassertion  of  the 
right  of  search  — on  all  these  questions  he 
had  very  positive  opinions  and  maintained 
them  vigorously.  In  the  year  1853,  he 
^ went  aJbroad,  studied  the  workings  of  Euro- 
pean systems,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of 
various  foreign  statesmen  ; but  he  did  not 
change  his  opinions  or  his  temper  of  mind. 
In  England,  rather  than  put  on  court  cos- 
tume, he  gave  up  an  opportunity  to  be  pre- 
sented to  the  Queen  ; and  in  Russia  he  ap- 
pears to  have  made  good  his  contention  that, 
as  persons  of  other  nationalities  are  presented 
to  foreign  rulers  in  the  dress  which  they 
would  wear  before  their  own  sovereigns,  an 
American  should  be  presented  in  such  dress 
as  he  would  wear  before  the  President. 

But  if  he  maintained  the  traditional, 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  53 

old  - fashioned  American  attitude  toward 
“abroad,'’  he  was  very  sure,  when  he  dealt 
with  a particular  case,  to  take  a practical 
and  modern  line  of  reasoning-.  Opposing 
the  treaty  of  peace  with  Mexico,  he  objected 
to  the  boundary  line,  to  the  promise  we  made 
never  to  acquire  any  more  Mexican  territory 
as  we  acquired  Texas,  and  to  the  stipulations 
about  the  Indians.  His  objections  were  dis- 
regarded, and  the  treaty  was  ratified  ; but 
five  years  later  the  United  States  paid  ten 
million  dollars  to  get  it  altered  in  those 
respects.  He  vigorously  opposed  the  Clay- 
ton-Bulwer  Treaty  in  1850,  when  it  was 
ratified,  and  three  years  later,  when  the 
subject  was  brought  up  in  open  Senate,  he 
stated  at  length  his  views  on  the  whole  sub- 
ject of  our  relations  with  England  and  Cen- 
tral America,  with  Spain  and  Cuba,  with 
European  monarchies  and  Latin-American 
states.  Whether  right  or  wrong,  they  are 
the  views  on  which  the  American  people 
have  acted  as  practical  occasions  have  arisen 
and  bid  fair  to  act  in  the  future. 

It  would  have  been  possible,  he  thought, 


54  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


but  for  Clayton’s  mismanagement,  to  get 
from  Nicaragua  a grant  to  the  United 
J States  of  exclusive  and  perpetual  control 
over  all  railroad  and  canal  routes  through 
that  country  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 
Instead,  we  had  pledged  ourselves  to  Eng- 
1/  land  “ not  to  do,  in  all  coming  time,  that 
which,  in  the  progress  of  events,  our  inter- 
ests, duty,  and  even  safety  may  compel  us 
to  do.”  lie  opposed  the  treaty  because  it 
invited  European  intervention  in  American 
affairs  ; because  it  denied  us  the  right  to 
fortify  any  canal  that  might  be  built ; be- 
cause its  language  was  equivocal  in  regard 
to  the  British  protectorate  over  the  Mosquito 
coast,  and  otherwise  clearly  contrary  to  the 
Moni’oe  Doctrine ; and  because  we  made 
an  unnecessary  promise  never  to  occupy 
any  part  of  Central  America.  To  all  these 
objections,  save  the  last,  time  has  added 
force  ; and  the  principle  of  the  last  is  now 
established  in  our  national  policy.  That 
principle  Douglas  proclaimed  so  often  that 
it  almost  rivals  the  principle  of  popular  sov- 
ereignty itself  in  the  matter  of  the  frequency 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  55 

of  its  appearance  in  bis  speeches.  “ You 

may  make,”  he  declared,  “ as  many  treaties 

as  you  please  to  fetter  the  limbs  of  this  giant 

Republic,  and  she  will  hurst  them  all  from  j 

her,  and  her  course  will  be  onward  to  a limit 

which  I will  not  venture  to  prescribe.”  The 

Alleghanies  had  not  withheld  us  from  the 

basin  of  the  Mississippi,  nor  the  Mississippi 

from  the  plains,  nor  the  Rocky  Mountains 

from  the  Pacific  coast.  Now  that  the  Pacific 

barred  our  way  to  the  westward,  who  could 

say  that  we  might  not  turn,  or  ought  not  to 

turn,  northward  or  southward  ? Later,  he 
. . ✓ 
came  to  contemplate  a time  when  the  Pacific 

might  cease  to  be  a barrier  : when  our  “ in- 
terests, duty,  and  even  safety  ” might  impel 
us  onward  to  the  islands  of  the  sea.  He 
would  make  no  pledges  for  the  future. 
Agreements  not  to  annex  territory  might 
be  reasonable  in  treaties  between  European 
powers,  but  they  were  contrary  to  the  spirit 
of  American  civilization.  “ Europe,”  he  said, 

“ is  antiquated,  decrepit,  tottering  on  the 
verge  of  dissolution.  When  you  visit  her, 
the  objects  which  excite  your  admiration  are 


56  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

the  relics  of  past  greatness  : the  broken  col- 
umns erected  to  departed  power.  Here 
everything  is  fresh,  blooming,  expanding, 
and  advancing.  We  wish  a wise,  practical 
policy  adapted  to  our  condition  and  posi- 
tion.” 

A more  ardent  and  thoroughgoing  expan- 
sionist is  not  to  be  found  among  eminent 
Americans  of  that  time,  or  even  of  later 
times.  While  he  was  denouncing  General 
Walker’s  lawless  invasion  of  Central  Amer- 
ica in  1858,  he  took  pains  to  make  it  plain 
that  it  was  the  filibusters’  method,  and  not 
their  object,  which  he  condemned.  In  fact, 
he  condemned  their  method  chiefly  because 
its  tendency  was  to  defeat  their  object. 

He  believed  that  England,  notwithstand- 
ing the  kinship  of  the  two  peoples  and  the 
similarity  of  their  civilizations,  was  our  rival 
by  necessity,  our  ill-wisher  because  of  the 
past.  The  idea  that  we  were  bound  to  the 
mother  country  by  ties  of  gratitude  or  affec- 
tion he  always  combated.  He  denied  her 
motherhood  as  a historical  proposition,  and 
demanded  to  know  of  Senator  Butler,  of 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  SENATE  57 


South  Carolina,  who  was  moved  to  eloquence 
over  America’s  debt  to  England  for  a lan- 
guage and  a literature,  whether  he  was  duly 
grateful  also  for  English  criticism  of  our 
institutions,  and  particularly  for  the  publi- 
cations of  English  abolitionists.  As  to  the 
British  claim  of  a right  to  search  American 
vessels  for  slaves,  he  was  for  bringing  the 
matter  at  once  to  an  issue  ; for  denying  the 
right  in  toto  ; and  if  Great  Britain  chose 
to  treat  our  resistance  as  a cause  of  war,  he 
would  be  for  prolonging  the  war  until  the 
British  flag  should  disappear  forever  from 
the  American  continent  and  the  adjacent 
islands. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 

On  all  these  questions,  alike  of  domestic 
and  of  foreign  policy,  Douglas  took  an  emi- 
nently hopeful,  an  eminently  confident  and 
resolute  stand.  His  opinions  were  such  as 
befitted  a strong,  competent,  successful  man. 
They  were  characteristic  of  the  West.  They 
were  based  on  a positive  faith  in  democracy, 
in  our  constitution  of  government,  in  the 
American  people.  In  that  faith,  likewise, 
he  addressed  himself  to  the  problem  which 
in  his  day,  as  before  and  after,  was  perplex- 
ing the  champions  of  democracy  and  giving 
pause  to  the  well-wishers  of  the  Republic. 
A later  generation  has  learned  to  think  of 
that  problem  as  the  negro  question,  a race 
question  ; Douglas’s  generation  thought  of  it 
merely  as  the  slavery  question. 

The  presidential  election  of  1848  made  a 
good  occasion  for  men  to  take  account  of  the 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  59 

question,  and  of  their  own  minds  concerning 
it.  In  February,  1848,  by  the  Treaty  of 
Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  Mexico  ceded  to  the 
United  States  the  territory  out  of  which 
California,  New  Mexico,  and  Utah  have  been 
formed.  With  the  signing  of  the  treaty  the 
material  elements  of  the  problem,  as  it  pre- 
sented itself  to.  that  generation,  were  com- 
pletely arranged. 

In  fifteen  Southern  States  and  in  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia  slavery  was  sanctioned 
and  protected  by  law.  In  fifteen  Northern 
States  slavery  was  prohibited  by  law.  The 
foreign  slave  trade  was  long  since  prohibited 
altogether,  though  from  time  to  time,  in  a 
small  way,  it  was  surreptitiously  revived. 
The  domestic  slave  trade,  among  the  slave 
States  and  in  the  District,  was  still  permitted. 
There  was  a law  on  the  statute  book  to  com- 
pel the  return  of  slaves  fleeing  into  the 
free  States,  but  certain  of  its  provisions  had 
been  pronounced  unconstitutional,  and  it 
was  ineffective.  Of  the  territory  acquired 
from  France  in  1803,  all  that  part  which 
lay  south  of  the  line  of  36°  30',  North  lati- 


CO  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


tude,  witli  Missouri,  which  lay  north  of  the 
line,  was  either  organized  into  slave  States 
or  set  apart  for  the  Indians ; in  all  that 
part  which  lay  north  of  the  line  of  36°  30', 
except  Missouri,  slavery  was  forbidden  by  a 
law  of  Congress  passed  in  1820.  It  was 
competent  for  Congress  to  repeal  the  law  at 
any  time,  but  from  the  country’s  long  ac- 
quiescence in  it,  and  from  the  circumstances 
of  its  passage,  which  were  such  that  a 
stigma  of  bad  faith  would  be  fixed  upon 
whichever  section  should  move  for  its  repeal, 
it  seemed  to  have  a force  and  stability  more 
like  the  Constitution’s  itself  than  that  of 
ordinary  laws.  There  remained  the  terri- 
tory got  from  Mexico,  concerning  which,  al- 
though from  the  beginning  of  the  war  the 
question  of  slavery  in  any  territory  that 
might  come  to  us  at  the  end  of  it  had  been 
constantly  in  agitation,  Congress  had  as  yet 
passed  no  law.  What  law  Congress  should 
make  about  slavery  in  California,  New 
Mexico,  and  Utah  was  the  main  question. 
But  there  was  also  a question  of  the  right 
boundary  between  New  Mexico  and  Texas, 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  61 

which  had  been  admitted  in  1845  as  a slave 
State,  with  an  agreement  that  she  might  at 
any  time  divide  herself  up  into  four  States. 

The  material  elements  of  the  problem, 
then,  were  comparatively  simple,  and  the  im- 
mediately pressing  questions  were  easily 
phrased  ; but  the  intangible  element  of  pub- 
lic opinion  was  uncommonly  hard  to  estimate. 
So  far  as  the  great  parties  were  concerned, 
it  was  impossible  to  fix  upon  either  of  them 
any  general  theory  about  slavery  or  any  defi- 
nite policy  with  it.  Up  to  this  time,  both 
had  apparently  gone  on  the  understanding 
that  it  was  not  a proper  issue  in  political 
contests.  A small  group  of  unpractical  men 
had,  in  fact,  tried  to  build  up  a party  on  the 
issue  of  opposition  to  it,  but  they  had  no 
prospect  of  carrying  a single  electoral  vote. 
The  adherents  of  the  old  parties  were  agreed 
on  one  thing : that  there  was  no  lawful  way 
for  Congress  or  the  people  of  the  free  States 
to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  slave  States. 
They  were  divided  among  themselves,  inside 
of  party  lines,  on  the  fugitive  slave  law,  on 
the  interstate  slave  trade,  on  slavery  and  the 


62  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and 
on  slavery  in  the  Territories. 

But  if  party  lines  did  not  yet  accurately 
represent  the  divisions  of  opinion  on  these 
questions,  there  was,  nevertheless,  a group- 
ing of  men  according  to  their  opinions  on 
the  general  question  which  already  had  its 
effects  in  politics.  Every  thoughtful  Amer- 
ican of  that  day  belonged  to  one  or  another 
of  several  groups  according  to  the  view  he 
took  of  two  things : slavery  itself,  and  the 
body  of  law  and  usage  that  had  grown  up 
about  it.  There  were  the  abolitionists,  who 
believed  slavery  to  be  so  utterly  wrong  that 
they  were  ready  to  go  all  lengths  to  get  rid 
of  it,  violating  the  Constitution,  breaking  the 
compromises,  endangering  the  Union.  There 
were  the  Southern  fire-eaters,  who  not  only 
believed  slavery  right  but  were  similarly 
willing  to  go  all  lengths  to  defend  and  ex- 
tend it.  There  were  the  moderate  men 
who  made  up  the  bulk  of  the  two  great 
parties  in  the  North,  who  believed  slavery 
wrong  but  felt  themselves  bound  by  the  com- 
promises of  the  Constitution  which  protected 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  63 

it  where  it  already  existed  and  debarred 
from  any  method  of  attacking  it  which  might 
bring  the  Union  into  danger.  There  were 
the  moderate  men  of  the  South,  Whigs  and 
Democrats  alike,  who  believed  either  that 
slavery  was  right  or  at  least  that  there  was 
no  better  state  possible  for  the  mass  of  the 
blacks,  but  who  were  yet  devoted  to  the 
Union  and  respected  their  constitutional  ob- 
ligations. Finally,  there  were  men  so  con- 
stituted that  they  could  decline  to  take  any 
thought  whether  slavery  were  right  or 
wrong,  and  could  deal  with  every  question 
that  arose  concerning  it  as  a question  of 
expediency  merely,  or  of  law  and  precedent. 

To  which  of  these  groups  should  Douglas 
join  himself?  Up  to  this  time,  his  public 
record  was  too  meagre  to  show  clearly  where 
he  stood.  In  1845,  when  the  bill  to  annex 
Texas  was  before  the  House,  he  had  offered 
an  amendment  extending  the  compromise 
line  of  1820  through  the  new  State,  so  that 
if  Texas  were  ever  divided  slavery  would  be 
prohibited  in  such  State  or  States  as  should 
be  formed  north  of  that  line.  Both  in  the 


64  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


House  and  in  the  Senate  he  had  voted  against 
the  famous  resolution  of  Mr.  David  Wilmot 
to  exclude  slavery  from  any  territory  that 
we  might  get  from  Mexico,  and  he  continued 
to  oppose  that  motion,  in  whatever  form  it 
appeared,  until  the  legislature  of  Illinois  in- 
structed him  to  favor  it.  In  1848,  he  voted 
for  the  so-called  Clayton  Compromise,  which 
proposed  to  organize  California,  Oregon,  and 
New  Mexico  into  Territories  and  merely  ex- 
tend over  them  the  Constitution  and  laws  of 
the  United  States  so  far  as  these  should  prove 
applicable  ; hut  he  also  voted  for  the  hill  to 
organize  the  Territory  of  Oregon  with  a 
clause  prohibiting  slavery.  By  his  speeches, 
no  less  than  hy  his  votes,  he  was  committed 
to  the  position  that  the  Missouri  Compromise 
was  a final  settlement  so  far  as  the  Louisi- 
ana Purchase  was  concerned,  and  that  the 
compromise  line  ought  to  he  extended 
through  the  Mexican  Cession  to  the  Pacific. 
He  was  not  clearly  committed  on  any  other 
of  the  points  at  issue  between  the  friends 
and  the  opponents  of  slavery. 

But  he  had  roundly  denounced  the  aho- 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 


65 


litionists,  and  he  had  married  the  daughter 
of  a slaveholder.  The  day  after  his  wedding 
his  father-in-law  presented  him  a deed  to  a 
plantation  in  Mississippi  and  a number  of 
slaves.  He  gave  it  back,  not,  so  he  declared, 
because  he  thought  it  wrong  to  hold  slaves, 
but  because  he  did  not  know  how  to  govern 
them  or  to  manage  a plantation.  His  wife 
soon  fell  heir  to  the  land  and  negroes,  and 
at  her  death  they  passed  to  her  children  under 
a will  which  requested  that  the  blacks  be  not 
sold  but  kept  and  cared  for  by  the  testator’s 
descendants.  Douglas,  as  the  guardian  of 
his  infant  children,  respected  their  grand- 
father’s wishes.  For  that  reason  he  was 
called  a slaveholder,  and  a fellow  senator 
once  openly  accused  him  of  shaping  his  course 
as  a public  man  to  accord  with  his  private 
interests.  He  denied  and  disproved  the 
charge,  but  proudly  added  : “ I implore  my 
enemies,  who  so  ruthlessly  invade  the  private 
sanctuary,  to  do  me  the  favor  to  believe  that 
I have  no  wish,  no  aspiration,  to  be  consid- 
ered purer  or  better  than  she  who  was,  or 
they  who  are,  slaveholders.” 


66  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

He  was  of  those  who  could  he  indifferent 
to  the  moral  quality  of  slavery.  He  could 
favor  whatever  policy  the  Constitution  re- 
quired, or  precedents  favored,  or  public  ex- 
pediency demanded ; if  his  enemies  were 
to  he  believed,  he  could  take  whatever  course 
ambition  and  self-interest  impelled  him  to. 
Never  once  during  his  long  wrestling  with 
the  slavery  question  did  he  concede  that  any 
account  should  he  taken  of  the  moral  charac- 
ter of  the  institution,  or  intimate  that  he  be- 
lieved it  wrong  for  one  man  to  hold  another 
man  in  bondage. 

The  Democratic  National  Convention  of 
1848,  though  its  platform  was  as  vague  as  it 
could  be  made,  nominated  a candidate  who 
was  committed  to  a particular  plan  with 
slavery  in  the  Territories.  The  candidate 
was  Lewis  Cass,  of  Michigan,  and  his  plan 
was  set  forth  in  a letter  to  one  Nicholson,  of 
Nashville,  Tennessee,  of  date  December  24, 
1847.  The  plan  appeared  to  be  a very  sim- 
ple one.  It  was  to  leave  the  people  of  each 
Territory,  so  soon  as  it  should  be  organized, 
free  to  regulate  their  domestic  institutions  as 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  67 

they  chose.  He  favored  it  for  two  reasons  : 
first,  because  Congress  had  no  right  to  inter- 
fere ; and  second,  because  the  people  them- 
selves were  the  best  judges  of  what  institu- 
tions they  ought  to  have.  That  was  the  barest 
form  of  the  doctrine  which  its  opponents  in 
derision  named  “ squatter  sovereignty.”  It 
was  contrary  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Wil- 
mot  Proviso,  which  invoked  the  authority  of 
Congress  to  exclude  slavery  from  all  the 
Territories,  and  contrary,  also,  to  whatever 
doctrine  or  no  doctrine  was  implied  in  the 
motion  to  extend  the  compromise  line  to  the 
Pacific,  exercising  the  authority  of  Congress 
to  exclude  slavery  north  of  the  line  and  for- 
bearing to  exercise  it  south  of  the  line.  It 
was  equally  contrary  to  a third  doctrine 
which  was  brought  before  the  convention. 
William  L.  Yancey,  a delegate  from  Ala- 
bama, offered  a resolution  to  the  effect  that 
neither  Congress  nor  any  territorial  legisla- 
ture had  any  right  to  exclude  slave  property 
from  the  Territories.  This  was  a mild  state- 
ment of  the  extreme  Southern  doctrine  that 
slaves  were  property,  so  recognized  by  the 

V 


68  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

Constitution,  and  that  a slaveholder  had  the 
right  to  take  his  slaves  anywhere  hut  into  a 
State  where  slavery  was  forbidden. 

The  doctrine  of  Cass  seemed  to  accord 
best  with  that  democratic  theory  of  the  gov- 
ernment which  Douglas  had  always  pro- 
fessed. It  accorded  well  with  his  faith  in 
the  builders  of  the  West.  It  alone,  of  all 
the  doctrines  advanced,  accorded  fully  with 
his  attitude  of  indifference  to  the  moral 
quality  of  slavery.  He  soon  embraced  it, 
therefore,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  was 
oftenest  occupied  embodying  it  in  legislation, 
defending  it,  restating  it  to  suit  new  condi- 
tions, modifying  it  to  meet  fresh  exigencies. 
Cass,  though  his  authorship  of  the  doctrine 
is  disputed,  was  at  first  held  responsible  for 
it,  and  he  advocated  it  with  great  ability. 
But  in  the  end  men  well-nigh  forgot  who  the 
author  of  the  principle  was,  so  preeminent 
was  Douglas  as  its  defender.  He  made  it 
his,  whosesoever  it  was  at  first,  and  his  it  will 
always  be  in  history. 

During  the  session  of  1848-49,  he  intro- 
duced a bill  to  admit  California  as  a State, 


THE  GEEAT  QUESTION 


69 


leaving  the  people  to  settle  the  slavery  ques- 
tion as  they  pleased.  But  his  first  great 
oppoi’tunity  came  in  the  session  of  1849-50. 

Cass  had  been  beaten  in  the  election. 
Zachary  Taylor,  the  successful  candidate  of 
the  Whigs,  was  a Southerner  and  a slave- 
holder, but  he  was  elected  on  a non-commit- 
tal platform,  and  he  had  never  declared,  if 
indeed  he  had  ever  formed,  any  opinions  on 
the  questions  in  dispute.  His  first  message 
merely  notified  Congress  that  California, 
whither  people  were  rushing  from  all  parts 
of  the  country  in  search  of  gold,  had  of  her 
own  motion  made  ready  for  statehood ; he 
expressed  a hope  that  New  Mexico  would 
shortly  follow  her  example,  and  recommended 
that  both  be  admitted  into  the  Union  with 
such  constitutions  as  they  might  present.  Im- 
mediately, the  House,  where  the  free-soilers 
held  a balance  of  power,  fell  into  a long  wran- 
gle over  the  speakership ; and  the  Senate  was 
soon  in  fierce  debate  over  certain  anti-slavery 
resolutions  presented  from  the  legislature  of 
Vermont.  The  North  seemed  to  be  united 
on  the  Wilmot  Proviso  as  it  had  never  before 


70  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

been  united  on  any  measure  of  opposition  to 
slavery,  and  the  South,  fearing  to  lose  the 
fruits  of  her  many  victories  in  statesman- 
ship, in  diplomacy,  and  on  Mexican  battle- 
fields, was  threatening  disunion  if,  by  the 
admission  of  California  as  a free  State  with 
no  slave  State  to  balance,  her  equality  of 
representation  in  the  Senate  should  be  de- 
stroyed. The  portents  were  all  of  disagree- 
ment, struggle,  disaster. 

But  at  the  end  of  January,  Henry  Clay, 
though  he  had  come  back  to  the  scene  of  his 
many  stirring  conflicts  in  the  past  minded 
to  be  “ a calm  and  quiet  looker-on,”  roused 
himself  to  one  more  essay  of  that  statesman- 
ship of  compromise  in  which  he  was  a mas- 
ter. He  made  a plan  of  settlement  that  cov- 
ered all  the  controversies  and  put  it  in  the 
form  of  a series  of  resolutions.  It  was  to 
admit  California  with  her  free-state  constitu- 
tion ; to  oi’ganize  the  remainder  of  the  Mex- 
ican Cession  into  Territories,  with  no  restric- 
tion as  to  slavery  ; to  pay  Texas  a sum  of 
money  on  condition  that  she  yielded  in  the 
dispute  over  the  boundary  between  her  and 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  71 

New  Mexico ; to  prohibit  the  slave  trade, 
hut  not  slavery,  in  the  District  of  Columbia ; 
to  leave  the  interstate  slave  trade  alone ; and 
to  pass  an  effective  fugitive  slave  law. 

For  two  days,  Clay  spoke  for  his  plan. 
Age,  though  it  had  not  bereft  him  of  his  con- 
summate skill  in  oratory,  added  pathos  to 
his  genuine  fervor  of  patriotism  as  in  that 
profoimd  crisis  of  our  affairs  he  pleaded  with 
his  fellow  senators  and  with  his  divided 
countrymen.  There  followed  the  most  not- 
able series  of  set  speeches  in  the  history  of 
Congress.  One  after  another,  the  old  lead- 
ers, Calhoun,  Webster,  Benton,  Cass,  and 
the  rest,  — for  all  were  still  there,  — rose 
and  solemnly  addressed  themselves  to  the 
state  of  the  country  and  the  plan  of  settle- 
ment. All  but  Calhoun  : now  very  near  his 
end,  he  was  too  weak  to  stand  or  speak,  and 
Mason,  of  Virginia,  read  for  him,  while  he 
sat  gloomily  silent,  his  last  bitter  arraign- 
ment of  the  North.  He  was  against  the 
plan.  Benton,  though  on  opposite  grounds, 
also  found  fault  with  it.  Webster,  to  the 
rage  and  sorrow  of  his  own  New  England, 


72  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


gave  it  liis  support.  Then  the  new  men 
spoke.  Jefferson  Davis,  on  whom,  as  Cal- 
houn was  borne  away  to  his  grave,  the  man- 
tle of  his  leadership  seemed  visibly  to  fall, 
steadfastly  asserted  the  Southern  claim  that 
slaveholders  had  a right  to  go  into  any  Terri- 
tory with  their  slaves,  but  offered,  as  the  ex- 
treme concession  of  the  South,  to  extend  the 
Missouri  line  to  the  Pacific  if  property  in 
slaves  were  protected  below  the  line.  Chase, 
of  Ohio,  impressive  in  appearance  but  stiff 
in  manner,  argued  weightily  for  the  consti- 
tutionality and  rightfulness  of  the  Wilmot 
Proviso.  Seward,  of  New  York,  though  the 
shrewdest  politician  of  the  anti-slavery  forces, 
enraged  the  Southerners  and  startled  the 
coimtry  with  the  announcement  that  “ a 
higher  law  than  the  Constitution  ” enjoined 
upon  Congress  to  guard  these  fresh  lands 
for  freedom. 

But  none  of  the  new  men,  and  none  of 
the  old  leaders  but  Clay  himself,  had  such  a 
part  as  Douglas  in  the  actual  settlement. 
He  supported  the  resolutions,  and  as  chair- 
man of  the  Committee  on  Territories  he 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  73 

wrote  and  introduced  two  bills : one  to  admit 
California,  and  one  to  organize  the  Territo- 
ries of  New  Mexico  and  Utah  with  no  restric- 
tions as  to  slavery  and  to  adjust  the  dispute 
with  Texas.  When  Clay  was  put  at  the  head 
of  a Committee  of  Thirteen,  to  which  all  the 
subjects  of  dispute  were  referred,  he  was 
often  in  consultation  with  the  chairman  of 
the  Committee  on  Territories.  Douglas  was 
of  opinion  that  the  various  measures  pro- 
posed would  have  a better  chance  of  passing 
separately  than  all  in  one,  but  Clay  decided 
to  deal  with  California,  the  Territories,  and 
the  Texas  boundary  in  a single  measure. 
This,  with  separate  bills  on  the  fugitive  slave 
law  and  the  slave  trade  in  the  District,  he 
reported  early  in  May.  The  Omnibus,  as 
the  first  bill  was  called,  was  simply  Doug- 
las’s two  bills  joined  together  with  a wafer : 
the  words,  “ Mr.  Clay,  from  the  Commit- 
tee of  Thirteen,”  were  substituted  for  the 
words,  “Mr.  Douglas,  from  the  Committee 
on  Territories.”  But  there  was  one  im- 
portant change.  Douglas’s  bill  gave  the 
territorial  legislatures  authority  over  all 


74  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


rightful  subjects  of  legislation,  subject  to  the 
Constitution,  save  that  they  could  pass  no 
law  interfering’  with  the  primary  disposal 
of  the  soil.  Clay’s  committee,  contrary  to 
his  wish,  added  the  clause,  “ nor  in  respect  to 
African  slavery.”  Douglas  moved  to  strike 
out  the  exception.  He  was  voted  down,  but 
bided  his  time,  persuaded  another  senator  to 
renew  the  motion  at  a favorable  moment,  and 
it  passed. 

But  the  Omnibus  could  not  pass.  The 
death  of  President  Taylor,  who  would  prob- 
ably have  vetoed  it,  brought  Fillmore,  a 
friend  of  the  compromise,  into  the  White 
House  ; but  there  were  only  a handful  of 
senators  who  favored  every  one  of  the  mea- 
sures so  combined.  Late  in  July,  after 
months  of  debate  and  negotiation  had  wea- 
ried Clay  out  and  driven  him  from  the  scene, 
all  but  the  part  relating  to  Utah  was  stricken 
out,  and  with  that  single  passenger  the  Om- 
nibus went  through  the  Senate.  Then  sep- 
arately,  one  after  another,  as  Douglas  had 
advised,  the  other  measures  were  passed. 
The  House  quickly  accepted  them,  Fillmore 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  75 

signed  tliem,  and  the  last  of  the  compromises 
was  complete.  Jefferson  Davis  had  opposed 
it,  and  had  often  been  pitted  against  Doug- 
las in  debate,  for  they  were  champions  of 
contrary  theories,  but  at  the  end  he  declared  : 
“ If  any  man  has  a right  to  be  proud  of  the 
success  of  these  measures,  it  is  the  senator 
from  Illinois.”  The  enterprise,  indeed,  was 
Clay’s ; his  was  the  idea,  the  initiative,  the 
general  plan.  It  is  rightly  called  Clay’s 
compromise.  But  the  execution  of  the  plan 
was  quite  as  much  Douglas’s  work  as  his. 
When  Clay  died,  no  one  had  a better  right 
than  Douglas  to  inherit  his  place  as  the 
statesman  and  orator  of  compromise  and  con- 
ciliation. 

In  the  defense  of  the  settlement  he  was 
no  less  conspicuous.  Though  in  the  South 
such  extremists  as  Yancey  and  Quitman  de- 
clared that  the  so-called  compromise  was  in 
fact  a surrender  of  Southern  rights  and  a 
sufficient  reason  for  abandoning  the  Union, 
there  were  Northern  men  quite  as  violently 
exercised  over  what  seemed  to  them  a base 
truckling  to  the  slave  power.  The  legisla- 


76  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

ture  of  Illinois  had  formally  instructed  her 
senators  to  support  the  Wihnot  Proviso, 
and  Douglas  had  thus  been  compelled,  all 
through  the  session,  to  vote  for  motion  after 
motion  to  prohibit  slavery  outright  in  the 
Territories.  At  the  end  of  the  session,  when 
he  returned  to  his  home,  he  found  Chicago 
wrought  lip  to  a furor  of  protest.  The  city 
council  actually  voted  to  release  officials 
from  all  obligation  to  enforce  the  fugitive 
slave  law  and  citizens  from  all  obligation 
to  respect  it.  A mass  meeting  was  about  to 
pass  resolutions  approving  this  extraordinary 
action  of  the  council  and  denouncing  as  trai- 
tors the  senators  and  representatives  who 
had  voted  for  the  law,  when  Douglas  walked 
upon  the  stand,  announced  that  the  next  even- 
ing he  would  publicly  defend  the  measures  of 
compromise,  and  demanded  to  be  heard  be- 
fore he  was  condemned.  A great  audience, 
the  greatest  ever  assembled  in  the  city,  lis- 
tened to  his  defense.  It  was  bold,  skilful, 
successful.  He  avowed  his  authorship  of 
three  of  the  compromise  measures,  his  ap- 
proval of  the  others.  He  took  them  up  one 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  77 

by  one,  explained  them,  called  for  objections, 
and  answered  every  objection  effectively. 
At  the  end,  he  proposed  and  carried  resolu- 
tions pledging  the  meeting  to  stand  by  the 
Constitution  and  the  laws,  and  the  meeting 
voted  further,  with  but  eight  or  ten  nays,  to 
repudiate  the  resolutions  of  the  council. 
The  next  night,  the  council  met  and  repealed 
them. 

It  seemed,  in  fact,  that  in  planting  himself 
on  the  compromise  Douglas  had  rightly  fore- 
cast the  verdict  of  the  country  as  a whole. 
An  adjourned  meeting  of  a Southern  conven- 
tion which  had  been  called  before  the  settle- 
ment with  a view  to  some  united  and  vigorous 
action  took  now  a tone  so  mild  that  it  allayed, 
instead  of  exciting,  the  fears  of  patriots. 
Jefferson  Davis,  an  opponent,  and  Foote,  a 
supporter  of  the  settlement,  went  before  the 
people  of  Mississippi  as  rival  candidates  for 
the  governorship,  and  Davis  was  beaten. 
Yancey  in  Alabama  was  overthrown  in  his 
own  party.  Only  South  Carolina  would  not 
be  reconciled.  Throughout  the  North,  and 
particularly  in  New  England,  attempts  to  re- 


78  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

sist  the  fugitive  slave  law  were  sometimes  vio- 
lent and  occasionally  successful,  and  Charles 
Sumner,  from  Massachusetts,  and  Wade, 
from  Ohio,  were  sent  to  join  Seward  and 
Chase  and  Hale,  the  aggressive  anti-slavery 
men  in  the  Senate.  With  Sumner,  whose 
first  important  speech  was  an  attack  upon  the 
law,  Douglas  instantly  engaged  in  the  first  of 
many  hitter  controversies.  An  attack  on  a 
law  so  clearly  demanded  by  the  Constitution 
was,  he  declared,  an  attack  on  the  Constitu- 
tion itself,  such  as  no  senator  could  make 
without  breaking  his  oath  of  office.  But  in 
little  more  than  a year  the  lower  House  of 
Congress  voted  by  a good  majority  that  the 
compromise  measures  should  he  regarded  as 
a permanent  settlement.  In  1852,  the 
Democrats,  assembled  in  national  conven- 
tions at  Baltimore,  indorsed  them  in  their 
platform.  So  did  the  Whigs  ; and  Rufus 
Choate,  their  convention  orator,  was  excusa- 
ble for  his  hyperbole  when  he  described 
“ with  what  instantaneous  and  mighty  charm 
they  calmed  the  madness  and  anxiety  of  the 
hour.” 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION 


79 


Cass,  in  liis  seventieth  year,  was  the  lead- 
ing candidate  before  the  Democratic  conven- 
tion ; so  far  as  the  leadership  of  parties  can 
be  determined  in  America,  he  was  still  the 
leader  of  the  party.  But  Douglas,  in  his  for- 
tieth year,  was  pressing  to  the  front.  In  the 
preliminary  campaign  he  was  put  forward 
as  the  candidate  of  young  America,  and 
other  State  conventions  than  that  of  Illinois 
commended  him.  At  Baltimore,  his  support- 
ers were  enthusiastic,  aggressive,  boisterous. 
His  name  in  the  long  list  of  candidates  al- 
ways aroused  an  applause  which  showed  that 
he  was  classed  with  Cass  and  Buchanan  in 
the  popular  estimation,  and  not  with  the 
lesser  men.  Beginning  with  twenty  votes 
on  the  first  ballot,  he  rose  steadily  until  on 
the  thirty-first  he  led  with  ninety-two.  But 
neither  he  nor  Cass  had  a good  following 
from  the  South.  An  expediency  candidate, 
acceptable  to  the  South,  was  found  in  Frank- 
lin Pierce,  who  had  fought  in  the  war  with 
Mexico.  Against  him  the  Whigs  pitted  the 
commander-in-chief  in  the  war.  But  Scott 
was  thought  to  be  tainted  with  free -soil 


80  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

opinions.  The  Democrats,  more  thoroughly 
united,  swept  the  country,  and  the  new  ad- 
ministration came  into  power  with  a great 
majority  in  both  houses  of  Congress. 

In  neither  branch  of  that  Democratic 
Congress  was  there  another  man  so  fit  to 
take  the  lead  as  Douglas.  A new  senator, 
coming  to  Washington  in  1852,  found  him 
already  risen  to  the  first  importance  there. 
“ His  power  as  a debater,”  said  this  observer, 
“ seemed  to  me  unequaled  in  the  Senate. 
He  was  industrious,  energetic,  bold,  and  skill- 
ful in  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  his 
party.  He  was  the  acknowledged  leader  of 
the  Democratic  party  in  the  Senate.”  It 
should  be  added  that  he  never  lost  touch 
with  the  lower  House.  Neither  was  he  un- 
mindful of  the  President’s  part  in  making- 
laws,  but  no  President  could  be  less  disposed 
than  Pierce  was  to  set  up  his  will  against 
any  measure  which  might  come  to  him 
stamped  with  the  party  stamp.  Douglas’s 
wife  died  early  in  1853,  and  in  the  summer 
he  made  his  journey  to  Europe.  When  he 
returned,  he  was  in  a position  the  most 


THE  GREAT  QUESTION  81 

favorable  for  original  and  constructive  states- 
manship. By  virtue  of  his  leadership  of  the 
Senate,  he  was  in  effect  the  leader  of  Con- 
gress. He  had  the  power  of  initiative.  He 
was  at  the  age  when  men  are  ripest  for  en- 
terprises of  pith  and  moment.  Unhesitat- 
ingly, he  advanced  to  the  front  and  centre  of 
the  stage.  When  the  session  ended,  his  name 
was  forever  associated  with  a law  that  upset 
precedents  and  traditions,  divided  old  parties 
and  summoned  up  new  ones,  made  — and 
unmade  — history. 

January  4,  1854,  Mr.  Douglas,  from  the 
Committee  on  Territories,  reported  a hill  to 
form  the  Territory  of  Nebraska  out  of  that 
part  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  which  lay 
west  and  north  of  Missouri. 


CHAPTER  IV 


LEADERSHIP 

There  was  nothing  new  in  the  main  pro- 
posal. A hill  to  organize  this  same  Ter- 
ritory had  passed  the  House  the  year  before. 
It  was  generally  conceded  that  the  region 
ought  to  have  a territorial  government. 
Vast  as  it  was,  it  had  less  than  a thou- 
sand white  inhabitants,  but  the  overland 
route  to  the  Pacific  ran  across  it,  and  there 
was  sure  to  be  a rapid  immigration  into  it 
so  soon  as  it  should  be  thrown  open  to  set- 
tlers. What  was  both  new  and  startling  was 
a clause  permitting  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Territory,  whenever  it  should  be  admitted  to 
statehood,  to  decide  for  themselves  whether 
they  would  have  slavery  or  not.  The  eighth 
section  of  the  Compromise  Act  of  1820 
provided  that  slavery  should  never  exist 
anywhere  in  the  Louisiana  Purchase  north 


LEADERSHIP 


83 


of  36°  30',  North  latitude,  save  in  the  State 
of  Missouri. 

In  the  report  which  accompanied  the  bill, 
Douglas  declared  that  it  was  based  on  the 
principles  of  the  compromise  measures  of 
1850.  Those  measures,  he  maintained,  af- 
firmed three  propositions  : questions  relating 
to  slavery  in  the  Territories  and  in  States  to 
be  formed  out  of  them  should  be  left  to  the 
people  thereof  ; cases  involving  title  to  slaves 
and  questions  of  personal  freedom  should  be 
left  to  the  local  courts,  with  a right  of  appeal 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States; 
the  mandate  of  the  Constitution  concerning 
fugitive  slaves  applied  to  Territories  as  well 
as  States.  Three  days  later,  these  proposi- 
tions were  incorporated  in  the  bill. 

January  16,  Archibald  Dixon,  a senator 
from  Kentucky,  offered  an  amendment  ex- 
pressly repealing  the  eighth  section  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise  law.  Douglas  remon- 
strated, but  in  a few  days  he  called  on  Dixon, 
the  two  senators  went  for  a drive,  and  in 
the  course  of  it  Douglas  promised  to  accept 
the  amendment.  He  was  satisfied,  so  Dixon 


84  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

reported  his  conversation,  that  the  Missouri 
Compromise  was  unconstitutional  and  that 
it  was  unfair  to  the  South.  “ This  proceed- 
ing,” he  said,  “ may  end  my  political  career, 
but,  acting  under  the  sense  of  duty  which 
animates  me,  I am  prepared  to  make  the 
sacrifice.  I will  do  it.”  January  22,  with 
several  other  congressmen,  he  called  on 
Jefferson  Davis,  Secretary  of  War,  and  was 
by  him  conducted  to  the  White  House. 
Contrary  to  his  usage,  for  it  was  Sunday, 
the  President  granted  them  an  interview.  At 
the  end  of  it,  he  promised  to  support  the 
repeal.  The  next  day,  Douglas  reported  a 
substitute  for  the  Nebraska  bill.  It  pro- 
vided for  two  Territories,  Kansas  and  Ne- 
braska, instead  of  one  ; and  it  declared  the 
eighth  section  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
law  to  be  inoperative  because  it  was  “ super- 
seded by  ” the  principles  of  the  compromise 
of  1850. 

At  the  report  and  the  bill  in  its  first  form 
the  anti-slavery  men  in  Congress  took  in- 
stant alarm.  By  the  time  the  substitute 
was  presented,  the  whole  country  knew  that 


LEADERSHIP 


85 


something  extraordinary  was  afoot.  With- 
out a sign  of  any  popular  demand,  without 
preliminary  agitation  or  debate,  Douglas,  of 
Illinois,  had  set  himself  to  repeal  the  Missouri 
Compromise.  He  had  undertaken  to  throw 
open  to  slavery  a great  region  long  conse- 
crated to  freedom.  He  had  written  the  bill 
of  his  own  motion,  by  himself,  in  his  own 
house.  The  South  had  not  asked  for  the 
concession,  the  North  had  not  in  any  wise 
consented  to  it.  For  a little  while,  in 
fact,  the  Southern  leaders  seemed  to  dis- 
trust the  bill,  for  they  distrusted  Douglas ; 
one  or  two  of  them,  like  Sam  Houston,  of 
Texas,  resisted  it  to  the  last,  declaring  it  was 
sure  in  the  end  to  do  the  South  more  harm 
than  good.  But  for  the  most  part  they  came 
quickly  into  line  behind  Douglas,  though 
they  never  generally  accepted  his  principle 
of  popular  sovereignty.  As  to  the  North, 
the  challenge  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill 
net  there  with  such  a response  as  no  South- 
ern aggression  had  yet  provoked.  Through 
every  avenue  of  expression  — through  the 
press  and  the  pulpit,  in  petitions  to  Congress, 


86  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

in  angry  protests  of  public  meetings  and  sol- 
emn resolves  of  legislatures  — a hostile  and 
outraged  public  opinion  broke  upon  Doug- 
las and  his  bill.  His  own  party  could  not 
be  held  in  line.  Scores  of  Democratic  news- 
papers turned  against  him.  Save  the  legis- 
lature of  Illinois,  no  Northern  assembly,  re- 
presentative or  other,  that  could  speak  with 
any  show  of  authority,  dared  to  support  him. 
No  Southern  fire-eater  was  ever  half  so  re- 
viled. He  could  have  traveled  from  Boston 
to  Chicago,  so  he  afterwards  declared,  by 
the  light  of  his  own  burning  effigies. 

But  the  firmest  and  clearest  protest  of  all 
came  from  the  sturdy  little  band  of  anti- 
slavery men  in  Congress.  The  day  after 
Douglas  proposed  his  substitute,  it  came  up 
for  debate,  and  Chase,  of  Ohio,  speaking  for 
the  opposition,  asked  for  more  time  to  ex- 
amine the  new  provisions.  Douglas  granted 
a week,  and  the  next  day  there  appeared  in 
various  newspapers  an  address  to  the  coun- 
try entitled  “ An  Appeal  of  the  Independent 
Democrats  in  Congress.”  Chase  was  the 
principal  author  of  it ; he  and  Sumner  and 


LEADERSHIP 


87 


four  representatives  signed  it.  They  de- 
nounced the  bill  as  a breach  of  faith,  infring- 
ing the  historical  compact  of  1820,  and  as 
part  of  a plot  to  extend  the  area  of  slavery ; 
and  they  accused  Douglas  of  hazarding  the 
dearest  interests  of  the  American  people  in 
a presidential  game. 

That  judgment  of  him  and  of  the  bill  was 
probably  accepted  by  a majority  of  his  con- 
temporaries. For  lack  of  Southern  support, 
he  had  missed  the  Democratic  nomination  in 
1852.  It  seemed  clear  that  whatever  North- 
ern candidate  the  South  should  prefer  would 
be  nominated  in  1856.  His  rivals  were  all,  in 
one  way  or  another,  commending  themselves 
to  the  South.  Pierce  was  hand  in  glove  with 
Davis  and  other  Southern  leaders.  Marcy, 
in  the  Department  of  State,  and  Buchanan, 
in  a foreign  mission,  were  both  working  for 
the  annexation  of  Cuba,  a favorite  Southern 
measure.  It  was  suspected  that  Cass,  old 
as  he  was,  had  it  in  mind  to  move  the  repeal 
when  Douglas  went  ahead  of  him. 

The  contemporaries  of  Douglas  were  un- 
der a necessity  to  judge  his  motives,  for  they 


88  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


had  to  pass  upon  liis  fitness  for  high  office 
and  great  responsibilities,  and  no  other  mo- 
tive than  ambition  was  so  natural  and  obvi- 
ous an  explanation  of  his  course.  But  it  is 
questionable  if  any  such  positive  judgment 
as  was  necessary,  and  therefore  right,  in  his 
contemporaries,  is  obligatory  upon  histo- 
rians. What  he  did  was  in  accord  with  a 
political  principle  wliich  he  had  avowed,  and 
it  was  not  in  conflict  with  any  moral  prin- 
ciple he  had  ever  avowed,  for  he  did  not 
pretend  to  believe  that  slavery  was  wrong. 
True,  he  had  once  thought  the  Missouri 
Compromise  a sacred  compact ; but  there 
were  signs  that  he  had  abandoned  that  opin- 
ion. It  is  enough  to  decide  that  he  took  a 
wrong  course,  and  to  point  out  how  ambition 
may  very  well  have  led  him  into  it.  It  is 
too  much  to  say  he  knew  it  was  wrong,  and 
took  it  solely  because  he  was  ambitious. 

But  if  he  had  taken  a wrong  course  he 
did  not  fail  to  do  that  which  will  often  force 
us,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  into  admiration  for  a 
man  in  the  wrong : he  pursued  it  unwaver- 
ing to  the  end.  Neither  the  swelling  uproar 


LEADERSHIP 


89 


from  without  nor  a resolute  ancl  conspic- 
uously able  opposition  within  the  Senate 
daunted  him  for  a moment.  He  pressed  the 
bill  to  its  passage  with  furious  energy.  He 
set  upon  Chase  savagely,  charging  him  with 
bad  faith  in  that  he  had  gained  tune,  by  a 
false  pretense  of  ignorance  of  the  bill,  to 
flood  the  couutiy  with  slanderous  attacks 
upon  it  and  upon  its  author.  The  audacity 
of  the  announcement  that  the  Compromise 
of  1850  repealed  the  Compromise  of  1820 
wras  well-nigh  justified  by  the  skill  of  his 
contention.  It  was  a principle,  he  main- 
tained, and  no  mere  temporary  expedient, 
for  which  Clay  and  Webster  had  striven, 
which  both  parties  had  indorsed,  which  the 
country  had  acquiesced  in,  — the  principle  of 
“ popular  sovereignty.”  That  principle  lay 
at  the  base  of  our  institutions  ; it  was  illus- 
trated in  all  the  achievements  of  our  past ; 
it,  and  it  alone,  would  enable  us  in  safety  to 
go  on  and  extend  our  institutions  into  new 
regions.  Cass,  though  he  made  difficulties 
about  details,  supported  the  bill,  and  the 
Southerners  played  their  part  well.  But 


90  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


Douglas  afterwards  said,  and  truly : “ I 
passed  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act  myself.  I 
had  the  authority  and  power  of  a dictator 
throughout  the  whole  controversy  in  both 
houses.  The  speeches  were  nothing.  It  was 
the  marshaling  and  directing  of  men  and 
guarding  from  attacks  and  with  ceaseless 
vigilance  preventing  surprise.” 

Chase  was  the  true  leader  of  the  opposi- 
tion, and  he  was  equipped  with  a most  thor- 
ough mastery  of  the  slavery  question  in  its 
historical  and  constitutional  aspects.  By 
shrewd  amendments  he  sought  to  bring 
out  the  division  between  the  Northern  and 
Southern  supporters  of  the  bill ; for  the 
Southerners  held  that  slave-owners  had  a 
constitutional  right  to  go  into  any  Territory 
with  their  property,  — a right  with  which 
neither  Congress  nor  a territorial  legislature 
could  interfere.  Douglas,  however,  managed 
to  avoid  the  danger.  He  made  another 
change  in  the  important  clause.  To  please 
Cass  and  others,  he  made  it  declare  that  the 
Compromise  of  1820  was  “ inconsistent  with  ” 
instead  of  “ superseded  by  ” the  principles 


LEADERSHIP 


91 


of  the  later  compromise  ; and  then  he  added 
the  words,  “ it  being  the  true  intent  and 
meaning  of  this  act  not  to  legislate  slavery 
into  any  Territory  or  State,  nor  to  exclude 
it  therefrom,  but  to  leave  the  inhabitants 
thereof  perfectly  free  to  form  and  regulate 
their  domestic  institutions  in  their  own  way, 
subject  only  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.”  That,  as  Benton  said,  was 
a little  stump  speech  incorporated  in  the 
bill ; and  it  proved  a very  effective  stump 
speech  indeed. 

Neither  the  logic  and  the  accurate  know- 
ledge of  Chase,  nor  the  lofty  invective  of 
Sumner,  nor  the  smooth  eloquence  of  Everett, 
nor  Seward’s  rare  combination  of  political 
adroitness  with  an  alertness  to  moral  forces, 
matched,  in  hand  to  hand  debate,  the  keen- 
mindedness, the  marvelous  readiness,  and 
the  headlong  force  of  Douglas.  Their  set 
speeches  were  impressive,  but  in  the  quick 
fire,  the  question-and-answer,  the  give-and- 
take  of  a free  discussion,  he  was  the  master 
of  them  all.  When,  half  an  hour  after  mid- 
night of  the  third  of  March,  he  rose  before 


92  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

a full  Senate  and  crowded  galleries  to  close 
the  debate,  he  was  at  his  best.  Often  inter- 
rupted, he  welcomed  every  interruption  with 
courtesy,  and  never  once  failed  to  put  his 
assailant  on  the  defensive.  Now  Sumner  and 
now  Chase  was  denying  that  he  had  come 
into  office  by  a saci’ifice  of  principle  ; now 
Seward  was  defending  his  own  State  of  New 
York  against  a charge  of  infidelity  to  the 
compact  of  1820  ; now  Everett,  friend  and 
biographer  and  successor  of  Webster,  was 
protesting  that  he  had  not  meant  to  mis- 
represent Webster’s  views.  Always,  after 
these  encounters,  Douglas  knew  how  to  come 
back,  with  a graver  tone,  to  the  larger  issue, 
as  if  they,  and  not  he,  were  trying  to  obscure 
it.  A spectator  might  have  fancied  that 
these  high-minded  men  were  culprits,  and  he 
their  inquisitor.  Now  and  then,  as  when  he 
dealt  with  the  abolitionists,  there  was  no 
questioning  the  sincerity  of  his  feeling,  and 
it  stirred  him  to  a genuine  eloquence.  He 
was  not  surprised  that  Boston  burned  him 
in  effigy.  Had  not  Boston  closed  her  Fan- 
euil  Hall  upon  the  aged  W ebster  ? Did  not 


LEADERSHIP 


93 


Sumner  live  there  ? And  lie  turned  upon 
the  senator  from  Massachusetts : “ Sir,  you 
will  remember  that  when  you  came  into  the 
Senate,  and  sought  an  opportunity  to  put 
forth  your  abolition  incendiarism,  you  ap- 
pealed to  our  sense  of  justice  by  the  senti- 
ment, ‘ Strike,  but  hear  me  first ! ’ But 
when  Mr.  Webster  went  back  in  1850  to 
speak  to  his  constituents  in  his  own  self- 
defense,  to  tell  the  truth  and  to  expose  his 
slanderers,  you  would  not  hear  him,  but  you 
struck  him  first."  Again  and  again,  as  at 
the  end  of  a paragraph  of  unadorned  but 
trenchant  sentences  the  small,  firm-knit  fig- 
ure quivered  with  a leonine  energy,  the  great, 
swart  head  was  thrown  backward,  and  the 
deep  voice  swelled  into  a tone  of  triumph 
or  defiance,  the  listeners  could  not  forbear 
to  applaud.  Once,  even  Seward  broke 
forth : “ I have  never  had  so  much  respect 
for  him  as  I have  to-night.” 

The  vote  in  the  Senate  was  27  ayes  to  14 
noes ; but  in  the  House  the  opposition  was 
dangerously  strong,  and  but  for  the  precau- 
tion of  securing  the  support  of  the  adminis- 


94  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


tration  the  bill  might  have  failed.  There 
was  a fierce  parliamentary  battle.  Richard- 
son, Douglas’s  friend  and  chief  lieutenant, 
kept  the  House  in  continuous  session  thirty- 
six  hours  trying  to  force  through  a motion 
to  fix  a term  for  the  debate.  Feeling  rose 
on  both  sides.  Personal  encounters  were 
imminent.  Douglas,  in  constant  attendance, 
watched  every  move  of  the  opposition  and 
was  instant  with  the  counter-move.  It  was 
a month  before  the  hill  could  he  brought 
to  a vote,  and  then  it  passed,  with  a slight 
change,  by  a majority  of  thirteen.  At  the 
end  of  May,  the  President  signed  it,  and 
Douglas,  turning  from  the  work  of  enacting 
it  into  law  to  the  harder  task  of  defending 
it  before  the  country,  beheld  the  whole  field 
of  national  politics  transformed.  The  Whig 
party,  crushed  to  earth  in  1852,  made  no 
move  to  take  a stand  on  the  new  issue  ; 
it  was  dead.  His  own  historical  Democratic 
party  was  everywhere  throughout  the  North 
in  a turmoil  that  seemed  to  forebode  dissolu- 
tion. One  new  party,  sprung  swiftly  and 
secretly  into  life  on  the  old  issue  of  enmity 


LEADERSHIP 


95 


to  foreigners  and  Roman  Catholics,  seemed 
to  stand  for  the  idea  that  the  best  way  to 
meet  the  slavery  issue  was  to  run  away  from 
it.  Another  new  party,  conceived  in  the 
spirit  of  the  appeal  of  the  independent  De- 
mocrats, was  struggling  to  he  horn.  State 
after  State  was  falling  under  the  power  of 
the  Know-Nothings;  and  those  men,  Whigs 
and  Democrats  alike,  who  for  years  had  been 
awaiting  an  opportunity  to  fight  slavery  out- 
side of  its  breastworks  of  compromise,  were 
forming  at  last  under  the  name  of  Anti- 
Nebraska  men.  Before  long,  they  began  to 
call  themselves  Republicans. 

He  did  not  quail.  Invited  to  pronounce 
the  Independence  Day  oration  at  Philadel- 
phia, he  made  of  it  the  first  thoroughgoing 
denunciation  of  the  Know-Nothings  that  any 
eminent  public  man  in  the  country  had  the 
courage  to  make.  Democrats  everywhere, 
bewildered  by  the  mystery  in  which  these 
new  adversaries  shrouded  their  designs,  were 
heartened  to  an  aggressive  warfare.  Some 
months  later,  he  took  the  stump  in  Virginia, 
where  Henry  A.  Wise  had  brought  the 


96  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


Democrats  firmly  into  line  against  tlie'  only 
rivals  they  had  in  the  South,  now  that  the 
Whigs  were  giving  up  the  fight.  The  cam- 
paign was  a crucial  one,  and  the  Know- 
Nothings  never  recovered  from  their  defeat. 
Douglas’s  course  had  the  merit  of  consistency 
as  well  as  courage,  for  he  had  always  cham- 
pioned the  rights  of  the  foreign  horn. 

The  Independence  Day  oration  was  also 
his  first  popular  defense  of  the  Ivansas-Ne- 
braska  bill.  But  so  soon  as  Congress  ad- 
journed he  hastened  home  to  face  his  own 
people  of  Illinois.  Chicago  was  once  more, 
as  in  1850,  a centre  of  hostility,  and  he  an- 
nounced that  he  would  speak  there  the  even- 
ing of  September  first.  When  the  time 
came,  flags  at  half  mast  and  the  dismal 
tolling  of  church  bells  welcomed  him.  A 
vast  and  ominously  silent  crowd  was  gath- 
ered, but  not  to  hear  him.  Hisses  and 
groans  broke  in  upon  his  opening  sentences. 
Hour  after  hour,  from  eight  o’clock  until 
midnight,  he  stood  before  them ; time  and 
again,  as  the  uproar  lessened,  his  voice  com- 
bated it : but  they  would  not  let  him  speak. 


LEADERSHIP 


97 


Nothing’,  in  fact,  but  his  resolute  bearing 
saved  him  from  violence.  On  the  way  home, 
his  carriage  was  set  upon  and  he  was  in  dan- 
ger of  his  life. 

Wherever  he  went  in  Northern  Illinois, 
similar  scenes  were  enacted.  But  he  got  a 
hearing,  and  in  the  central  counties  and  in 
“ Egypt,”  the  southern  part  of  the  State, 
where  the  people  were  largely  of  Virginian 
and  Kentuckian  descent,  he  was  cordially  re- 
ceived. He  kept  his  hold  upon  his  party  in 
Illinois,  and  Illinois,  alone  of  all  the  North- 
western States,  would  not  go  over  completely 
to  the  opposition.  The  Democratic  candidate 
for  state  treasurer  was  elected.  The  Know- 
Nothings  and  Anti-Nebraska  men  got  a ma- 
jority of  the  congressmen,  and  by  the  defec- 
tion of  certain  state  senators  who  held  over 
from  a previous  election  they  were  enabled 
to  send  Lyman  Trumbull,  Anti-Nebraska 
Democrat,  to  be  Douglas’s  colleague  at 
Washington.  That,  when  compared  with 
the  results  elsewhere  in  the  North,  was  a 
striking  proof  of  Douglas’s  power  with  his 
people.  Moreover,  the  Democrats  of  the 


98  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

Nortli  who  remained  in  the  party  had  ac- 
cepted his  leadership.  In  the  South,  the 
party  organization  was  soon  free  of  any  ef- 
fective opposition.  The  two  wings,  so  long 
as  they  were  united,  could  still  control  the 
Senate  and  elect  presidents.  All  would  still 
be  well,  if  only  all  went  well  on  those  W est- 
ern  plains  whither  Douglas  declared  that  the 
slavery  question  was  now  banished  forever 
from  the  halls  of  Congress. 

But  all  was  not  going  well  there.  When 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  passed,  Sumner 
exultantly  exclaimed : “ It  sets  freedom  and 
slavery  face  to  face,  and  bids  them  grapple.” 
Nebraska  was  conceded  to  freedom,  but  the 
day  Kansas,  the  southern  Territory,  was 
thrown  open  to  settlement,  a long,  confused, 
confusing  struggle  began.  The  whole  coun- 
try was  drawn  into  it.  Blue  lodges  in  the 
South,  emigrant  aid  societies  in  the  North, 
hurried  opposing  forces  into  the  field.  The 
Southerners,  aided  by  colonized  voters  from 
Missouri,  got  control  of  the  territorial  legisla- 
ture and  passed  a slave  code.  The  Free-Soil- 
ers,  ignoring  the  government  thus  established, 


LEADERSHIP 


99 


gathered  in  convention  at  Topeka,  formed  a 
free  state  constitution,  and  demanded  to  be 
admitted  into  the  Union  as  a State.  When 
a new  Congress  assembled  in  December, 
1855,  there  were  two  governments  in  Kan- 
sas, and  the  people  were  separated  into  hos- 
tile camps.  Brawls  were  frequent,  and  it 
was  clear  that  very  soon,  unless  the  general 
government  intervened,  there  would  be  con- 
certed violence.  A force  of  several  thousand 
pro-slavery  men,  encamped  on  the  Wakarusa 
Kiver,  were  threatening  Lawrence,  the  prin- 
cipal Free-Soil  town.  The  Free-Soil  men 
were  in  a majority,  but  their  course  had  been 
in  disregard  of  law.  The  pro-slavery  men 
were  in  a minority,  they  had  resorted  to  vio- 
lence and  fraud,  but  they  had  followed  the 
forms  of  law. 

President  Pierce,  swayed  by  Jefferson 
Davis,  took  the  side  of  slavery.  The  House 
was  nearly  two  months  organizing,  and  then 
the  President  sent  in  a message  to  Congress 
denouncing  the  Free-Soilers  for  resisting  the 
laws.  He  followed  it  up  with  a proclamation, 
and  placed  United  States  troops  at  the  dis- 


100  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

posal  of  the  regular  territorial  government. 
In  March,  Douglas,  from  his  Committee  on 
Territories,  made  a long  report  on  all  that 
had  occurred.  He,  too,  laid  the  blame  on 
the  emigrant  aid  societies.  He  was  against 
the  Topeka  constitution,  and  offered,  instead, 
a hill  providing  for  the  admission  of  Kan- 
sas, so  soon  as  her  population  should  reach 
93,000,  which  would  entitle  her  to  one  re- 
presentative in  Congress,  with  such  constitu- 
tion as  her  people  might  lawfully  adopt.  The 
House,  with  an  anti-slavery  majority,  was  for 
admitting  Kansas  at  once  with  the  Topeka 
constitution.  So  was  the  anti-slavery  group 
in  the  Senate,  now  swelled  into  a strong  mi- 
nority. In  the  fierce  debate  that  followed, 
Douglas  had  to  defend  the  results,  as  well  as 
the  theory,  of  his  law.  Sumner  was  the  bit- 
terest of  his  assailants,  and  their  controversy 
passed  all  bounds  of  parliamentary  restraint. 
In  Sumner’s  famous  speech  on  the  crime 
against  Kansas,  Butler,  of  South  Carolina, 
was  represented  as  the  Don  Quixote  of  slav- 
ery, Douglas  as  its  Sancho  Panza,  “ ready 
to  do  all  its  humiliating  offices.”  The  day 


LEADERSHIP 


101 


after  that  speech,  Lawrence  was  sacked,  and 
civil  war  broke  out  in  Kansas.  The  next 
day,  Preston  Brooks,  of  South  Carolina,  as- 
saulted Sumner  and  beat  him  down  on  the 
floor  of  the  Senate.  Ten  days  later,  the 
Democratic  convention  met  at  Cincinnati  to 
name  a candidate  for  the  presidency. 

Douglas  had  won  a good  following  from 
the  South,  but  Pierce  was  the  first  choice 
of  the  Southerners.  They  wanted  a servant 
merely,  not  a leader,  in  the  White  House. 
But  it  was  no  longer  a question  of  the  South’s 
preference  alone : it  was  a question  of  hold- 
ing the  two  or  three  Northern  States  that 
were  still  Democratic.  Of  these,  Pennsyl- 
vania was  the  most  important.  Buchanan 
was  the  choice  of  the  Northern  delegates  be- 
cause he  was  a Pennsylvanian  and  because, 
abroad  on  a foreign  mission,  he  had  escaped 
all  responsibility  for  Kansas.  On  the  first 
ballot,  he  led  with  135  votes,  Pierce  was  sec- 
ond with  122,  and  Douglas  had  but  33,  but 
as  before  he  rose  as  the  balloting  proceeded. 
Pierce’s  vote  fell  away ; after  the  fourteenth 
ballot,  his  name  was  withdrawn.  On  the 


102  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


fifteenth,  Buchanan  had  168,  Douglas  118. 
Richardson,  Douglas’s  manager,  thereupon 
arose  and  read  a dispatch  from  his  chief  di- 
recting his  friends  to  obey  the  will  of  the 
majority  and  give  Buchanan  the  necessary 
two  thirds.  Once  more,  the  prize  escaped 
him,  though  he  had  hid  for  it  with  his  coun- 
try’s peace.  / - j 

But  the  platform  proclaimed  the  princi- 
ple of  his  famous  law  to  he  “ the  only  sound 
and  safe  solution  of  the  slavery  question.” 
He  was  at  the  head  of  his  party  as  Clay 
had  for  so  many  years  headed  the  Whigs. 
He  had  the  substance  of  power,  the  reality 
of  leadership,  whosesoever  the  trappings  and 
the  title  might  he.  Every  move  in  Con- 
gress was  made  with  a view  to  its  effect  in 
the  campaign,  and  it  was  he  who  arranged 
the  issues.  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  offered  an 
enabling  act  of  admirable  fairness,  intended 
to  secure  the  people  of  Kansas  in  their  right 
to  have  such  a state  constitution  as  they 
might  prefer,  and  Douglas  adopted  it  and 
held  the  Senate  for  it  against  the  House  bill 
to  admit  Kansas  with  the  Topeka  constitu- 


LEADERSHIP 


103 


tion.  No  agreement  could  be  reached,  for 
the  Republicans  in  their  platform  had  de- 
clared for  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  all 
the  Territories.  “ Bleeding  Kansas  ” was 
their  war-cry,  and  Douglas  charged,  not  with- 
out reason,  that  they  meant  to  keep  Kansas 
bleeding  until  the  election.  The  House 
went  so  far  as  to  attach  a rider  to  the  army 
appropriation  bill  forbidding  the  President 
to  employ  United  States  troops  in  aid  of  the 
territorial  authorities,  and  would  not  per- 
mit the  appropriations  to  pass  in  their  or- 
dinary form  until  Congress  adjourned  and 
the  President  was  forced  to  call  an  extra 
session. 

But  the  Republican  party  had  not  yet 
gathered  into  its  ranks  all  those  who  in  their 
hearts  favored  its  policy.  The  reality  of 
civil  war  in  Kansas  brought  a sobering  sense 
of  danger  to  the  Union  which  worked  con- 
trary to  the  angry  revolt  against  the  slave 
power,  and  Buchanan’s  appeal  to  the  lovers 
of  the  Union  in  both  sections  was  successful. 
He  was  elected,  and  the  Democrats,  with 
a majority  in  both  houses  of  Congress,  got 


104  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


once  more  a free  hand  with  Kansas  and  the 
slavery  question. 

They  had,  too,  a majority  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  and  now  for  the  first  time  the  court 
came  forward  with  its  view  of  the  question. 
Two  days  after  the  inauguration,  the  Dred 
Scott  decision  was  handed  down,  and  the 
territorial  controversy  passed  into  a new 
phase.  All  parties  were  forced  to  reconsider 
their  positions.  Douglas,  especially,  had 
need  of  all  his  adroitness  to  bring  his  doc- 
trine of  popular  sovereignty  into  accord  with 
the  decision ; for  so  far  as  it  went  it  ac- 
corded completely  with  that  extreme  South- 
ern view  of  Calhoun’s  and  Yancey’s  and 
Jefferson  Davis’s  which  he  had  never  yet,  in 
his  striving  after  an  approachment  with  the 
South,  ventured  far  enough  to  accept.  The 
court  decided  that  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence did  not  mean  negroes  when  it 
declared  all  men  to  be  equal ; that  no  negro 
could  become  a citizen  of  the  United  States  ; 
that  the  right  of  property  in  slaves  was  af- 
firmed in  the  Constitution  ; and  that  Con- 
gress had  no  power  to  prohibit  slavery  in 


LEADERSHIP 


105 


any  Territory.  Tlie  announcement  that  the 
eighth  clause  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
law  was  unconstitutional  was  acceptable 
enough  to  the  man  who  had  accomplished 
its  repeal,  hut  what  became  of  popular  sov- 
ereignty if  the  Constitution  itself  decreed 
slavery  into  the  Territories  ? But  Douglas, 
whether  he  met  the  difficulty  effectively  or 
not,  faced  it  promptly.  Speaking  at  Spring- 
field  in  June,  he  indorsed  the  decision,  not 
merely  as  authoritative,  but  as  right ; and 
he  claimed  that  it  was  in  accord  with  his 
doctrine.  For  slavery,  he  pointed  out,  was 
dependent  for  its  existence  anywhere  upon 
positive  legislation.  This  the  inhabitants  of 
a Territory,  acting  through  their  territorial 
legislature,  could  grant  or  deny  as  they 
chose.  The  constitutional  right  of  a slave- 
holder to  take  his  property  into  a Territory 
would  avail  him  nothing  if  he  found  there 
no  laws  and  police  regulations  to  protect  it. 

The  decision  was,  however,  universally 
and  rightly  considered  a great  victory  for 
slavery.  It  condemned  the  Republican  pro- 
gramme as  unconstitutional,  and  it  strength- 


106  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

enecl  the  contention  of  the  Southerners. 
But  the  Southern  leaders  were  in  little  need 
of  heartening : no  cause  ever  had  bolder 
and  firmer  champions.  Under  cover  of  the 
panic  of  1857,  which  drew  men’s  minds 
away  from  politics,  a group  of  them  were 
already  planning  a most  daring  last  attempt 
to  bring  Kansas  into  the  Union  as  a slave 
State.  In  the  grappling  there,  freedom  had 
shown  itself  stronger  than  slavery.  Robert 
J.  Walker,  a slaveholder,  whom  Buchanan 
and  Douglas  had  persuaded  to  accept  the 
governorship,  reported  that  the  Free-Soilers 
outnumbered  their  adversaries  three  to  one. 
The  legislature  had  provided  for  the  election 
of  delegates  to  a constitutional  convention, 
and  when  the  question  of  submitting  the 
constitution  to  the  people  arose,  the  gov- 
ernor, an  upright  man,  promptly  announced 
that  it  would  be  submitted,  and  the  admin- 
istration sustained  him.  Many  Free-Soilers, 
however,  made  the  mistake  of  staying  away 
from  the  polls  on  election  day.  The  conven- 
tion, under  control  of  the  pro-slavery  leaders, 
met  in  October  at  Lecompton,  drew  up  a 


LEADERSHIP 


107 


constitution  wliieli  safeguarded  slavery  elab- 
orately, and  hit  upon  an  extraordinary  way 
to  submit  it  to  the  people.  The  electors 
were  permitted  to  vote  either  “ for  the  consti- 
tution with  slavery,”  or  “ for  the  constitu- 
tion without  slavery,”  but  not  against  the 
constitution  as  a whole.  Even  if  “ the  con- 
stitution without  slavery  ” carried,  such 
slaves  as  were  already  held  in  Kansas  could 
continue  to  he  held. 

So  far  had  the  Democratic  party  pro- 
gressed toward  the  extreme  Southern  view, 
and  such  was  the  ascendency  of  the  South- 
erners over  Buchanan,  that  he  would  not 
stand  up  against  the  outrageous  scheme,  and 
it  seemed  on  the  point  of  succeeding.  But 
Douglas  was  come  now  to  a parting  of  the 
ways.  Forced  to  choose  between  absolute 
subserviency  to  the  South  and  what  was  left 
of  his  principle  of  popular  sovereignty,  he 
remonstrated  angrily  with  the  President  for 
breaking  faith  with  Walker  and  the  Kan- 
sans. At  the  end  of  a stormy  interview, 
Buchanan,  stirred  out  of  his  wonted  placid- 
ity, threateningly  reminded  the  senator  that 


108  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

no  Democrat  ever  broke  with  a Democratic 
administration  without  being  crushed.  Doug- 
las scornfully  retorted  : u Mr.  President,  I 
wish  you  to  remember  that  General  Jackson 
is  dead.”  The  new  Congress  was  no  sooner 
assembled  than  the  Lecompton  programme 
became  the  central  issue,  and  Douglas,  in 
flat  rebellion  against  his  party’s  Southern 
masters,  in  open  defiance  of  his  party’s  Pre- 
sident, was  again  the  man  of  the  hour. 

Superb  fighter  that  he  was,  he  had  a 
fighter’s  best  opportunity,  — great  odds  to 
fight  against,  and  at  last  a good  cause  to 
fight  for.  The  administration  proscribed 
him.  The  whole  South,  so  lately  reciting 
his  praises,  rose  up  against  him  and  reviled 
him  as  a traitor.  Of  his  party  associates  in 
the  Senate,  but  two  or  three  were  brave 
enough  to  follow  him.  Moreover,  the  panic 
had  swept  away  his  wealth.  He  was  near 
the  end  of  his  term  of  office,  and  the  trend 
in  Illinois  was  toward  the  Republicans.  The 
long  tide  which  had  so  steadily  borne  him  on 
to  fortune  seemed  to  ebb.  Married  again 
but  recently,  and  to  the  most  beautiful  wo- 


LEADERSHIP 


109 


man  in  Washington,  he  must  have  had  in 
mind,  as  he  took  up  his  new  role,  some  such 
thought  as  that  which  fortified  his  favorite 
hero  at  Marengo : one  battle  was  lost,  but 
there  was  time  enough  to  win  another. 

The  Lecompton  plotters  had  reckoned  on 
the  opposition  of  the  Republicans.  It  was 
Douglas  and  his  handfid  of  followers  who 
confoimded  them.  At  once,  they  accused 
him  of  deserting  them  to  make  sure  of  his 
reelection  to  the  Senate.  But  as  the  de- 
bate progressed,  and  his  name  kept  appear- 
ing on  the  same  side  with  Sumner’s  and 
Seward's  in  the  divisions,  another  notion 
spread.  Horace  Greeley  and  other  Republi- 
cans began  to  suggest  that  he  might  be  the 
man  to  lead  the  new  party  to  victory  on  a 
more  moderate  platform.  Throughout  the 
North,  people  who  had  abhorred  him  came 
first  to  wonder  at  him  and  then  to  praise 
him. 

But  he  fought  the  Lecompton  conspiracy 
from  his  old  base.  It  was  contrary  to  the 
principle  of  the  Ivansas-Nebraska  Act ; there 
had  been  gross  frauds  at  the  election  of  del- 


110  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

egates  ; the  form  of  submission  was  a mock- 
ery of  the  electors.  He  would  say  nothing 
for  slavery  or  against  it.  He  cared  not 
“ whether  slavery  was  voted  up  or  voted 
down.”  Give  the  people  a fair  and  free 
chance  to  form  and  adopt  a constitution,  and 
he  would  accept  it.  Let  them  have  a fair 
vote  on  the  Lecompton  constitution,  and  if 
they  ratified  it  he  would  accept  that.  Rat- 
ified it  was  at  the  absurd  election  the  con- 
vention had  ordered,  for  the  great  majority 
of  the  settlers  could  not  vote  their  opposition, 
hut  when  the  legislature,  now  Free-Soil, 
took  the  authority  to  submit  it  as  a whole, 
the  majority  against  it  by  far  exceeded  the 
highest  total  of  votes  the  pro-slavery  men 
had  ever  mustered.  Nevertheless,  the  Sen- 
ate passed  it,  Douglas  and  three  other  Demo- 
crats voting  in  the  negative.  His  following 
in  the  House  was  greater,  and  the  bill  was 
there  amended  so  as  to  provide  for  submit- 
ting the  constitution  to  the  people.  There 
was  a conference,  and  in  its  final  form  the 
bill  offered  the  people  of  Kansas  a bribe  of 
lands  if  they  would  accept  the  constitution, 


LEADERSHIP 


111 


and  threatened  them  with  an  indefinite  de- 
lay of  statehood  if  they  should  reject  it. 
Douglas,  however,  after  some  hesitation,  re- 
fused to  vote  for  the  hill  as  amended,  and 
when  the  time  came  the  Kansans,  by  more 
than  five  to  one,  rejected  the  constitution 
and  the  bribe. 

So  the  session  brought  no  settlement,  and 
Kansas  was  still  the  burning  issue  when 
Douglas  went  back  to  Illinois  and  took  the 
stump  in  the  senatorial  campaign.  Victor 
in  a stirring  parliamentary  contest,  this  time 
Chicago  welcomed  him.  But  there  awaited 
him  treason  in  the  ranks  of  his  own  party, 
— for  the  administration,  beaten  in  Con- 
gress, attacked  him  at  home,  — and  an  op- 
position now  completely  formed  and  led  by 
a man  whom  Douglas  himself,  in  his  own 
heart,  dreaded  as  he  had  never  dreaded  the 
ablest  of  his  rivals  at  Washington.  The 
Republicans  had  taken  the  unusual  course 
of  holding  a convention  to  nominate  their 
candidate  for  the  Senate,  and  the  candidate 
was  Abraham  Lincoln. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  RIVALS 

Hamilton  and  Jefferson,  Clay  and  Jack- 
son,  Douglas  and  Lincoln, — these  are  the 
three  great  rivalries  of  American  politics. 
The  third  was  not  the  least.  If  it  fell  short 
of  the  others  pn  variety  of  confrontments,  if 
it  was  not  so  long  drawn  out,  or  accompanied 
with  so  frequent  and  imposing  alignments 
and  realignments  of  vast  contending  forces  on 
a broad  and  national  field,  it  surpassed  them 
in  the  clearness  of  the  sole  and  vital  issue  it 
involved,  in  a closer  contact  and  measuring 
of  powers,  in  the  complete  and  subtle  corre- 
spondence of  the  characters  of  the  rivals  to 
the  causes  for  which  they  fought. 

Douglas  was  the  very  type  of  that  instant 
success  which  waits  on  ability  undistracted 
by  doubt  and  undeterred  by  the  fear  of  do- 
ing wrong  ; the  best  exemplar  of  that  Amer- 
ican statesmanship  which  accepted  things  as 


THE  RIVALS 


113 


they  were  and  made  the  most  of  them. 
Facile,  keen,  effective,  he  had  found  life  a 
series  of  opportunities  easily  embraced. 
Precocious  in  youth,  marvelously  active  in 
manhood,  he  had  learned  without  study,  re- 
solved without  meditation,  accomplished  with- 
out toil.  Whatever  obstacles  he  had  found 
in  his  path,  he  had  either  adroitly  avoided 
them  or  boldly  overleaped  them,  but  never 
laboriously  uprooted  them.  Whatever  sub- 
ject he  had  taken  in  hand,  he  had  swiftly 
compassed  it,  but  rarely  probed  to  the  heart 
of  it.  With  books  he  dealt  as  he  dealt  with 
men,  getting  from  them  quickly  what  he 
liked  or  needed  ; he  was  as  unlikely  to  pore 
over  a volume,  and  dog-ear  and  annotate  it, 
as  he  was  with  correspondence  and  slow  talk 
and  silences  to  draw  out  a friendship.  Yet 
he  was  not  cold  or  mean,  but  capable  of 
hero-worship,  following  with  ardor  the  ca- 
reers of  great  conquerors  like  Caesar  and 
Napoleon,  and  capable,  too,  of  loyalty  to 
party  and  to  men.  He  had  great  personal 
magnetism  : young  men,  especially,  he 
charmed  and  held  as  no  other  public  man 


114  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

could,  now  Clay  was  dead.  His  habits  were 
convivial,  and  the  vicious  indulgence  of  his 
strong  and  masculine  appetites,  the  only  re- 
laxation he  craved  in  the  intervals  of  his  fierce 
activities,  had  caused  him  frequent  illnesses  ; 
hut  he  was  still  a young  man,  even  by  Amer- 
ican standards,  for  the  eminence  he  had  at- 
tained. At  the  full  of  his  extraordinary 
powers,  battling  for  the  high  place  he  had 
and  the  higher  he  aspired  to,  there  was  no- 
where to  be  seen  his  equal  as  a debater  or  a 
politician,  — nowhere  but  in  the  ungainly 
figure,  now  once  more  erected  into  a posture 
of  rivalry  and  defiance,  of  the  man  whom  he 
had  long  ago  outstripped  and  left  behind  him 
in  the  home  of  their  common  beginnings. 

Slower  of  growth,  and  devoid  altogether 
of  many  brilliant  qualities  which  his  rival 
possessed,  Lincoln  nevertheless  outreached 
him  by  the  measure  of  the  two  gifts  the  other 
lacked : the ’twin  gifts  of  humor  and  of  brood- 
ing melancholy.  Bottomed  by  the  one  in 
homeliness,  his  character  was  by  the  other 
drawn  upward  to  the  height  of  human  nobility 
and  aspiration.  His  great  capacity  of  pain, 


THE  RIVALS 


115 


which  hut  for  his  buffoonery  would  no  doubt 
have  made  him  mad,  was  the  source  of  his 
rarest  excellencies.  Familiar  with  squalor, 
and  hospitable  to  vulgarity,  his  mind  was 
yet  tenanted  by  sorrow,  a place  of  midnight 
wrestlings.  In  him,  as  never  before  in  any 
other  man,  were  high  and  low  things  mated, 
and  awkwardness  and  ungainliness  and  un- 
couthness justified  in  their  uses.  At  once 
coarser  than  his  rival  and  infinitely  more  re- 
fined and  gentle,  he  had  mastered  lessons 
which  the  other  had  never  found  the  need 
of  learning,  or  else  had  learned  too  readily 
and  then  dismissed.  He  had  thoroughness 
for  the  other’s  competence  ; insight  into  hu- 
man nature,  and  a vast  sympathy,  for  the 
other’s  facile  handling  of  men  ; a deep  devo- 
tion to  the  right  for  the  other’s  loyalty  to 
party  platforms.  The  very  core  of  his  na- 
ture was  truth,  and  he  himself  is  reported  to 
have  said  of  Douglas  that  he  cared  less  for 
the  truth,  as  the  truth,  than  any  other  man 
he  knew. 

Hanging  for  some  years  upon  the  heels  of 
his  rival’s  rapid  ascent,  Lincoln  had  entered 


116  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

the  House  as  Douglas  left  it  for  the  Senate, 
but  at  the  end  of  the  term  he  retired  from 
polities  baffled  and  discouraged.  Tortured 
with  the  keen  apprehension  of  a form  and 
grace  into  which  he  could  never  monld  his 
crudeness,  tantalized  with  a sense  that  there 
must  be  a way  for  him  to  get  a hold  on 
his  fellows  and  make  a figure  in  the  history 
of  his  times,  he  had  watched  the  power  of 
Douglas  grow  and  the  fame  of  Douglas 
spread  until  it  seemed  that  Douglas’s  voice 
was  always  speaking  and  Douglas’s  hand  was 
everywhere.  Patiently  working  out  the  right 
and  wrong  of  the  fateful  question  Douglas 
dealt  with  so  boldly,  he  came  into  the  impreg- 
nable position  of  such  as  hated  slavery  and  yet 
forbore  to  violate  its  sanctuary.  Suddenly, 
with  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
Douglas  himself  had  opened  a path  for  him. 
He  went  back  into  politics,  and  took  a lead- 
ing part  in  the  Anti-Nebraska  movement. 
Whenever  opportunity  offered,  he  combated 
Douglas  on  the  stump.  The  year  Trumbull 
won  the  senatorship,  Lincoln  had  first  come 
within  a few  votes  of  it.  Risen  now  to  the 


THE  RIVALS 


117 


leadership  of  the  Republicans  in  Illinois,  he 
awaited  Douglas  at  Chicago,  listened  to  his 
opening  speech,  answered  it  the  next  even- 
ing, followed  him  into  the  centre  of  the 
State,  and  finally  proposed  a series  of  joint 
debates  before  the  people.  Douglas  hesi- 
tated, but  accepted,  and  named  seven  meet- 
ing-places : Ottawa  and  Freeport,  in  the 
northern  stronghold  of  the  Republicans ; 
Galesburg,  Quincy,  and  Charleston,  in  a re- 
gion where  both  parties  had  a good  follow- 
ing ; and  Jonesboro  and  Alton,  which  were 
in  “ Egypt.”  The  first  meeting  was  at  Ot- 
tawa, in  August ; the  last,  at  Alton,  in  the 
middle  of  October.  Meanwhile,  both  spoke 
incessantly  at  other  places,  Douglas  oftener 
than  once  a day.  First  the  fame  of  Doug- 
las, and  then  Lincoln’s  unexpected  survival 
of  the  early  meetings,  drew  the  eyes  of  the 
whole  country  upon  these  two  foremost 
Americans  of  their  generation,  face  to  face 
there  on  the  Western  prairie,  fighting  out 
the  great  question  of  the  times. 

Elevated  side  by  side  on  wooden  plat- 
forms in  the  open  air,  thrown  into  relief 


118  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

against  the  low  prairie  sky  line,  the  two 
figures  take  strong  hold  upon  the  im  igina- 
tion  : the  one  lean,  long-limbed,  uncommonly 
tall;  the  other  scarce  five  feet  high,  but 
compact,  manful,  instinct  with  energy,  and 
topped  with  its  massive  head.  In  voice  and 
gesture  and  manner,  Douglas  was  incom- 
parably the  superior,  as  he  was,  too,  in  the 
ready  command  of  a language  never,  indeed, 
ornate  or  imaginative,  and  sometimes  of  the 
quality  of  political  commonplace,  but  always 
forcible  and  always  intelligible  to  his  audi- 
ence. Lincoln  had  the  sense  of  words,  the 
imagination,  the  intensity  of  feeling,  which 
go  to  the  making  of  great  literature  ; but 
for  his  masterpieces  he  always  needed  time. 
His  voice  was  high  and  strained,  his  gestures 
ungraceful,  his  manner  painful,  save  in  the 
recital  of  those  passages  which  he  had  care- 
fully prepared  or  when  he  was  freed  of  his 
self-consciousness  by  anger  or  enthusiasm. 
Neither  of  them,  in  any  single  speech,  could 
be  compared  to  Webster  in  the  other  of  the 
two  most  famous  American  debates,  but  the 
series  was  a remarkable  exhibition  of  foren- 


THE  RIVALS 


119 


sic  power.  The  interest  grew  as  the  strug- 
gle lengthened.  People  traveled  great 
distances  to  hear  them.  At  every  meeting- 
place,  a multitude  of  farmers  and  dwellers 
in  country  towns,  with,  liere  and  tliere  a 
sprinkling  of  city-folk,  crowded  about  the 
stand  where  “ Old  Abe  ” and  the  “ Little 
Giant  ” turned  and  twisted  and  fenced  for 
an  opening,  grappled  and  drew  apart, 
clinched  and  strained  aud  staggered,  — but 
neither  fell.  The  wonder  grew  that  Lincohi 
stood  up  so  well  under  the  onslaughts  of 
Douglas,  at  once  skillful  and  reckless,  held 
him  off  with  so  firm  a hand,  gripped  him  so 
shrewdly.  Now,  the  wonder  is  that  Doug- 
las, wrestling  with  the  man  and  the  cause 
of  a century,  kept  his  feet  and  held  his 
own. 

He  was  fighting,  too,  with  an  enemy  in 
the  rear.  When  he  turned  to  strike  at  the 
administration,  Lincoln  would  call  out : 
“ Go  it,  husband  ! Go  it,  bear ! ” Apart 
from  that  diversion,  however,  the  debate, 
long  and  involved  as  it  was,  followed  but 
three  general  lines.  The  whole  is  resolvable 


120  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


into  three  elements,  — personalities,  politics. 
and  principles.  There  were  the  attacks  which 
each  made  upon  the  other’s  record  ; the  ef- 
forts which  each  made  to  weaken  the  other’s 
position  before  the  people ; and  the  con- 
trary views  which  were  advanced. 

Douglas  began,  indeed,  with  gracious  com- 
pliments to  his  opponent,  calling  him  “ an 
amiable,  kindly,  and  intelligent  gentleman.” 
Lincoln,  unused  to  praise  from  such  a source, 
protested  he  was  like  the  Hoosier  with  the 
gingerbread  : “ He  reckoned  he  liked  it  bet- 
ter than  any  other  man,  and  got  less  of  it.” 
But  in  a moment  Douglas  was  charging  that 
Lincoln  and  Trumbull,  Whig  and  Demo- 
crat, had  made  a coalition  in  1854  to  form 
the  Black  Republican  party  and  get  for 
themselves  the  two  senatorships  from  Illi- 
nois, and  that  Trumbull  had  broken  faith 
with  Lincoln.  Lincoln  in  turn  made  a 
charge  that  Douglas  had  conspired  with 
Presidents  Pierce  and  Buchanan  and  Chief 
Justice  Taney  to  spread  slavei’y  and  make  it 
universal.  The  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  was 
their  first  step,  the  Dred  Scott  decision  the 


THE  RIVALS 


121 


second ; but  one  more  step,  and  slavery 
could  be  fastened  upon  States  as  they  had  al- 
ready fastened  it  upon  Territories.  Douglas 
protesting  that  to  bring  such  a charge,  in- 
capable of  proof  or  disproof,  was  indecent, 
Lincoln  pointed  out  that  Douglas  had  sim- 
ilarly charged  the  administration  with  con- 
spiring to  force  a slave  constitution  upon 
Kansas  ; and  afterwards  took  up  a charge 
of  Trumbull’s  that  Douglas  himself  had  at 
first  conspired  with  Toombs  and  other  sen- 
ators to  prevent  any  reference  to  the  people 
of  whatsoever  constitution  the  Kansas  con- 
vention might  adopt.  When  they  moved 
southward,  Douglas  charged  Lincoln  with 
inconsistency  in  that  he  changed  his  stand 
to  suit  the  leanings  of  different  communi- 
ties. Of  all  these  charges  and  counter- 
charges, however,  none  was  absolutely 
proved,  and  no  one  now  believes  those  which 
Douglas  brought.  But  he  made  them  serve, 
and  Lincoln’s,  though  he  sustained  them 
with  far  better  evidence,  and  pressed  them 
home  with  a wonderful  clearness  of  reason- 
ing, — once,  he  actually  threw  his  argument 


122  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

into  a syllogism,  — did  no  great  harm  to 
Douglas. 

It  was  Douglas,  too,  who  began  the  spar- 
ring for  a political  advantage.  He  knew 
that  Lincoln’s  following  was  heterogeneous. 
“ Their  principles,”  he  jeered,  “ in  the  north 
are  jet  black,  in  the  centre  they  are  in  color 
a decent  mulatto,  and  in  lower  Egypt  they 
are  almost  white.”  His  aim,  therefore,  was 
to  fix  upon  Lincoln  such  extreme  views  as 
would  alarm  the  more  moderate  of  his  fol- 
lowers, since  the  extremists  must  take  him 
perforce,  as  a choice  of  two  evils,  even  though 
he  fell  far  short  of  their  radical  standard. 
To  this  end,  Douglas  produced  certain  reso- 
lutions which  purported  to  have  been  adopted 
by  an  Anti-Nebraska  convention  at  Spring- 
field  in  1854,  and  would  have  held  Lincoln 
responsible  for  them.  In  a series  of  ques- 
tions, he  asked  whether  Lincoln  were  still 
opposed  to  a fugitive  slave  law,  to  the  ad- 
mission of  a,ny  more  slave  States,  and  to  ac- 
quiring any  more  territory  unless  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  were  applied  to  it,  and  if  he  were 
still  for  prohibiting  slavery  outright  in  all 


THE  RIVALS 


123 


the  Territories  and  in  the  District  of  Co- 
lumbia, and  for  prohibiting  the  interstate 
slave  trade.  It  soon  transpired  that  Lincoln 
was  not  present  at  the  Springfield  convention, 
and  that  the  resolutions  were  not  adopted 
there,  but  somewhere  else,  and  Douglas  had 
to  defend  himself  against  a charge  of  mis- 
representation. Nevertheless,  when  they  met 
the  second  time,  at  Freeport,  Lincoln  an- 
swered the  questions.  He  admitted  the  right 
of  the  South  to  a fugitive  slave  law.  He 
would  favor  abolition  in  the  District  only 
if  it  were  gradual,  compensated,  and  accom- 
plished with  the  consent  of  the  inhabitants. 
He  was  not  sure  of  the  right  of  Congress  to 
prohibit  the  interstate  slave  trade.  He  would 
oppose  the  annexation  of  fresh  territory  if 
there  were  reason  to  believe  it  would  tend 
to  aggravate  the  slavery  controversy.  He 
could  see  no  way  to  deny  the  people  of  a 
Territory  if  slavery  were  prohibited  among 
them  during  their  territorial  life  and  they 
nevertheless  asked  to  come  into  the  Union 
as  a slave  State.  These  cautious  and  hesi- 
tating answers  displeased  the  stalwart  anti- 


124  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

slavery  men.  Lincoln  would  go  their  lengths 
in  but  one  particular  : he  was  for  prohibit- 
ing slavery  outright  in  all  the  Territories. 

Then  he  brought  forward  some  questions 
for  Douglas  to  answer.  Would  Douglas  vote 
to  admit  Kansas  with  less  than  93,000  in- 
habitants if  she  presented  a free  state  consti- 
tution? Would  he  vote  to  acquire  fresh 
territory  without  regard  to  its  effect  on  the 
slavery  dispute  ? If  the  Supreme  Court 
should  decide  against  the  right  of  a State 
to  prohibit  slavery,  would  he  acquiesce? 
“Can  the  people  of  a United  States  Terri- 
tory, in  any  lawful  way,  against  the  wish  of 
any  citizen  of  the  United  States,  exclude 
slavery  from  its  limits  prior  to  the  formation 
of  a state  constitution  ? ” 

Douglas  had  no  great  difficulty  with  the 
first  three  questions,  and  the  fourth  — the 
second,  as  Lincoln  read  them  — he  had  in 
fact  answered  several  times  already,  and  in 
a way  to  please  the  Democrats  of  Illinois. 
But  Lincoln,  contrary  to  the  advice  of  his 
friends,  pressed  it  on  him  again  with  a view 
to  the  “ all  hail  hereafter,”  for  it  was  meant 


THE  EIVALS 


125 


to  bring  out  the  inconsistency  of  tlie  princi- 
ple of  popular  sovereignty  with  the  Drecl 
Scott  decision,  and  the  difference  between 
the  Northern  and  the  Southern  Democrats. 
Douglas  answered  it  as  he  had  before.  The 
people  of  a Territory,  through  their  legisla- 
ture, could  by  unfriendly  laws,  or  merely  by 
denying  legislative  protection,  make  it  impos- 
sible for  a slave-owner  to  hold  his  slaves 
among  them,  no  matter  what  rights  he  might 
have  under  the  Constitution.  Lincoln  de- 
clared that  the  answer  was  historically  false, 
for  slaves  had  been  held  in  Territories  in 
spite  of  unfriendly  legislation,  and  pointed 
out  that  if  the  Dred  Scott  decision  was  right 
the  members  of  a territorial  legislature,  when 
they  took  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitu- 
tion, bound  themselves  to  grant  slavery  pro- 
tection. Later,  in  a fifth  and  last  question, 
he  asked  whether,  in  case  the  slave-owners  of 
a Territory  demanded  of  Congress  protection 
for  their  property,  Douglas  would  vote  to 
give  it  to  them.  But  Douglas  fell  back  upon 
his  old  position  that  Congress  had  no  right 
to  intervene.  He  would  not  break  with  his 


126  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 


supporters  in  Illinois,  but  by  liis  “ Freeport 
Doctrine  ” of  unfriendly  legislation  be  bad 
broken  forever  with  the  men  wlio  were  now 
in  control  of  bis  party  in  tlie  Southern  States. 

It  was  Lincoln  who  took  the  aggressive 
on  principles.  A famous  paragraph  of  bis 
speech  before  the  convention  which  nomi- 
nated him  began  with  the  words  : A house 
divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.’  I believe 
this  government  cannot  endure  permanently 
half  slave  and  half  free.”  That  was  a direct 
challenge  to  Douglas  and  his  whole  plan  with 
slavery,  and  throughout  the  debate,  at  every 
meeting,  the  doctrine  of  the  divided  house 
was  attacked  and  defended.  Douglas  de- 
clared that  Lincoln  was  inciting  half  his 
countrymen  to  make  war  upon  the  other  half ; 
that  he  went  for  uniformity  of  domestic  in- 
stitutions everywhere,  instead  of  letting  dif- 
ferent communities  manage  their  domestic 
affairs  as  they  chose.  But  no,  Lincoln  pro- 
tested, he  was  merely  for  resisting  the  spread 
of  slavery  and  putting  it  in  such  a state  that 
the  public  mind  would  rest  in  the  hope  of 
its  ultimate  extinction.  “ But  why,”  cried 


THE  RIVALS 


127 


Douglas,  “ cannot  this  government  go  on  as 
the  fathers  left  it,  as  it  has  gone  on  for  more 
than  a century  ? ” Lincoln  met  him  on  that 
ground,  and  had  the  better  of  him  in  discuss- 
ing what  the  fathers  meant  concerning  slav- 
ery. They  did  not  mean,  he  argued,  to  leave 
it  alone  to  grow  and  spread,  for  they  prohib- 
ited it  in  the  Northwest  Territory,  they  left 
the  word  “ slave  ” out  of  the  Constitution  in 
the  hope  of  a time  when  there  should  be  no 
slaves  under  the  flag.  Over  the  true  mean- 
ing of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  how- 
ever, Douglas  had  a certain  advantage,  for 
Lincoln  found  the  difficulty  which  candid 
minds  still  find  in  applying  the  principle  of 
equality  to  races  of  unequal  strength.  Doug- 
las plainly  declared  that  ours  is  a white  man's 
government.  Lincoln  admitted  such  an  in- 
feriority in  negroes  as  would  forever  prevent 
the  two  races  from  living  together  on  terms 
of  perfect  social  and  political  equality,  and 
if  there  must  be  inequality  he  was  in  favor 
of  his  own  race  having  the  superior  place. 
He  could  only  contend,  therefore,  for  the 
negro’s  equality  in  those  rights  which  are 


128  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

set  forth  in  the  Declaration.  Douglas  made 
the  most  of  this,  and  of  Lincoln’s  failure, 
through  a neglect  to  study  the  economic 
character  of  slavery,  to  show  clearly  how 
the  mere  restriction  of  it  would  lead  to  its 
extinction. 

But  Douglas  did  not,  and  perhaps  he 
could  not,  follow  Lincoln  when  he  passed 
from  the  Declaration  and  the  Constitution 
to  the  “ higher  law,”  from  the  question  of 
rights  to  the  question  of  light  and  wrong  ; 
for  there  Lincoln  rose  not  merely  above 
Douglas,  but  above  all  that  sort  of  politics 
which  both  he  and  Douglas  came  out  of. 
There,  indeed,  was  the  true  difference  be- 
tween these  men  and  their  causes.  Douglas 
seems  to  shrink  backward  into  the  past,  and 
Lincoln  to  come  nearer  and  grow  larger  as 
he  proclaims  it : “ That  is  the  real  issue. 
That  is  the  issue  which  will  continue  in  this 
country  when  these  poor  tongues  of  Judge 
Douglas  and  myself  shall  be  silent.  It  is 
the  eternal  struggle  between  these  two  prin- 
ciples — right  and  wrong  — throughout  the 
world.” 


THE  RIVALS 


129 


Nevertheless,  Douglas  won  the  senator- 
ship  and  kept  his  hold  on  the  Northern  De- 
mocrats. Immediately,  he  made  a visit  to 
the  South.  He  got  a hearing  there,  and  so 
made  good  his  boast  that  lie  could  proclaim 
his  principles  anywhere  in  the  Union ; but 
when  he  returned  to  Washington  he  found 
that  the  party  caucus,  controlled  by  Buchanan 
and  the  Southerners,  had  deposed  him  from 
the  chairmanship  of  the  Committee  on  Ter- 
ritories, which  he  had  held  so  many  years,  and 
from  this  time  he  was  constantly  engaged 
with  the  enemies  he  had  made  by  his  course 
onLecompton  and  by  his  Freeport  Doctrine. 
His  Northern  opponents  were  no  longer  in 
his  way.  He  had  overmatched  Sumner  and 
Seward  in  the  Senate,  and  beaten  the  ad- 
ministration, and  held  his  own  with  Lincoln, 
but  the  unbending  and  relentless  Southern- 
ers he  could  neither  beat  nor  placate.  It 
was  men  like  Jefferson  Davis  in  the  Senate, 
and  Yancey  at  Southern  barbecues  and  con- 
ventions, who  stood  now  between  him  and 
his  ambition.  That  very  slave  power  which 
he  had  served  so  well  was  upreared  to  crush 


130  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

him  because  he  hacl  come  to  the  limit  of  his 
subserviency.  His  plan  of  squatter  sover- 
eignty had  not  got  the  Southerners  Kansas, 
or  any  other  slave  State,  to  balance  Califor- 
nia and  Minnesota  and  Oregon.  They  de- 
manded of  Congress  positive  protection  for 
slavery  in  the  Territories.  The  most  signifi- 
cant debate  of  the  session  was  between 
Douglas  on  the  one  side  and  a group  of 
Southern  senators,  led  by  Jefferson  Davis, 
on  the  other.  He  stood  up  against  them 
manfully,  and  told  them  frankly  that  not  a 
single  Northern  State  would  vote  for  any 
candidate  on  their  platform,  and  they  as 
flatly  informed  him  that  he  could  not  carry 
a single  Southern  State  on  his. 

He  was  too  good  a politician  to  yield,  even 
if  there  had  been  no  other  reason  to  stand 
firm,  but  continued  to  defend  the  only  doc- 
trine on  which  there  was  the  slightest  chance 
of  beating  the  Republicans  in  the  approach- 
ing election.  One  method  he  took  to  defend 
it  was  novel,  but  he  has  had  many  imitators 
among  public  men  of  a later  day.  He  wrote 
out  his  argument  for  “ Harper’s,”  the  most 


THE  RIVALS 


131 


popular  magazine  of  tlie  day.  The  article 
is  not  nearly  so  good  reading  as  liis  speeches, 
but  it  was  widely  read.  Judge  Jeremiah 
Black,  the  Attorney-General  of  Buchanan’s 
cabinet,  made  a reply  to  it,  and  Douglas  re- 
joined ; but  little  of  value  was  added  to  the 
discussions  in  Congress  and  on  the  stump. 
The  Southerners,  however,  would  not  take 
warning.  As  they  saw  their  long  ascend- 
ency in  the  government  coming  to  an  end, 
their  demands  rose  higher.  Some  of  them 
actually  began  to  agitate  for  a revival  of  the 
African  slave  trade ; and  this  also  Douglas 
had  to  oppose.  His  following  in  the  Sen- 
ate was  now  reduced  to  two  or  three,  and 
one  of  these,  Broderick,  of  California,  a 
hrave  and  steadfast  man,  was  first  defeated 
by  the  Southern  interest,  and  then  slain  in 
a duel.  John  Brown's  invasion  of  Virginia 
somewhat  offset  the  aggressions  of  the 
South ; but  that,  too,  might  have  gone  for 
a warning.  The  elections  in  the  autumn 
of  1859  were  enough  to  show  that  the  North 
was  no  longer  disposed  to  forbearance  with 
slavery.  Douglas  went  as  far  as  any  man 


132  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

ill  reason  could  go  in  denouncing  John 
Brown  and  those  who  were  thought  to  have 
set  him  on  ; and  he  supported  a new  plan 
for  getting  Cuba.  But  Davis,  on  the  very 
eve  of  the  Democratic  convention  at  Charles- 
ton, was  pressing  upon  the  Senate  a series 
of  resolutions  setting  forth  the  extreme  de- 
mand of  the  South  concerning  the  Terri- 
tories. He  was  as  bitter  toward  Douglas 
as  he  was  toward  the  Republicans.  At 
Charleston,  Yancey  took  the  same  tone  with 
the  convention. 

Practically  the  whole  mass  of  the  Northern 
Democrats  were  for  Douglas  now,  and  the 
mass  of  Southern  Democrats  were  against 
him.  The  party  was  divided,  as  the  whole 
country  was,  by  a line  that  ran  from  East 
to  West.  Yet  it  was  felt  that  nothing  but 
the  success  of  that  party  would  avert  the 
danger  of  disunion,  and  the  best  judges 
were  of  opinion  that  it  could  not  succeed 
with  any  other  candidate  than  Douglas  or 
any  other  platform  than  popular  sovereignty. 
His  managers  at  Charleston  offered  the  Cin- 
cinnati platform  of  1856,  with  the  addition 


THE  RIVALS 


133 


of  a demand  for  Cuba  and  an  indorsement 
of  the  Dred  Scott  decision  and  of  any  future 
decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  on  slavery 
in  the  Territories.  But  the  Southerners 
would  not  yield  a hair’s  breadth.  Yancey, 
their  orator,  upbraided  Douglas  and  his  fol- 
lowers with  cowardice  because  they  did  not 
dare  to  tell  the  North  that  slavery  was  right. 
In  that  strange  way  the  question  of  right  and 
wrong  was  forced  again  upon  the  man  who 
strove  to  ignore  it.  Senator  Pugh,  of  Ohio, 
spokesman  for  Douglas,  answered  the  fire- 
eaters.  “ Gentlemen  of  the  South,”  he  cried, 
“ you  mistake  us  ! You  mistake  us  ! We 
will  not  do  it.”  The  Douglas  platform  was 
adopted,  and  the  men  of  the  cotton  States 
withdrew.  On  ballot  after  ballot,  a ma- 
jority of  those  who  remained,  and  a ma- 
jority of  the  whole  convention,  stood  firm 
for  Douglas,  but  it  was  decided  that  two 
thirds  of  the  whole  convention  was  required 
to  nominate.  Men  who  had  followed  his 
fortunes  until  his  ambition  was  become 
their  hope  in  life,  wearied  out  with  the  long- 
deferment,  broke  down  and  wept.  Finally, 


134  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

it  was  voted  to  adjourn  to  Baltimore.  In 
the  interval,  Davis  and  Douglas  fell  once 
more  into  their  hitter  controversy  in  the 
Senate. 

At  Baltimore,  a new  set  of  delegates  from 
the  cotton  States  appeared  in  place  of  the 
seceders,  hut  they  were  no  sooner  admitted 
than  another  group  withdrew,  and  even 
Cushing,  the  chairman,  left  his  seat  and  fol- 
lowed them.  Douglas  telegraphed  his  friends 
to  sacrifice  him  if  it  were  necessary  to  save 
his  platform,  but  the  rump  convention 
adopted  the  platform  and  nominated  him. 
The  two  groups  of  seceders  united  on  the 
Yancey  platform  and  on  Breckinridge,  of 
Kentucky,  for  a candidate.  A new  party  of 
sincere  hut  unpractical  Union-savers  took 
the  field  with  John  Bell,  an  old  Whig,  for  a 
candidate,  and  a platform  of  patriotic  plat- 
itudes. The  Republicans,  guided  in  ways 
they  themselves  did  not  under  stand,  had  put 
aside  Seward  and  taken  Lincoln  to  he  their 
leader. 

The  rivals  were  again  confronted,  hut  on 
cruelly  unequal  terms.  From  the  first,  it 


THE  RIVALS 


135 


was  clear  that  nearly  the  whole  North  was 
going  Republican,  and  that  the  cotton  States 
were  for  Breckinridge  or  disunion.  What- 
ever chance  Douglas  had  in  the  border 
States  and  in  the  Democratic  States  of  the 
North  was  destroyed  by  the  new  party.  But 
he  knew  he  was  at  the  head  of  the  true  party 
of  Jefferson,  he  felt  that  the  old  Union 
would  not  stand  if  he  was  beaten.  He  was 
the  leader  of  a forlorn  hope,  but  he  led  it 
superbly  well.  He  undertook  a canvass  of 
the  country  the  like  of  which  no  candidate 
had  ever  made  before.  At  the  very  outset 
of  it  he  was  called  upon  to  show  his  colors 
in  the  greater  strife  that  was  to  follow.  At 
Norfolk,  in  Virginia,  it  was  demanded  of 
him  to  say  whether  the  election  of  a Black 
Republican  President  would  justify  the 
Southern  States  in  seceding.  He  answered, 
no.  Pennsylvania  was  again  the  pivotal 
State,  and  at  an  election  in  October  the  Re- 
publicans carried  it  over  all  their  opponents 
combined.  Douglas  was  in  Iowa  when  he 
heard  the  news.  He  said  calmly  to  his  com- 
panions : “ Lincoln  is  the  next  President. 


136  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

I have  no  hope  and  no  destiny  before  me 
but  to  do  my  best  to  save  the  Union  from 
overthrow.  Now  let  ns  turn  our  course  to 
the  South  ” — and  he  proceeded  through  the 
border  States  straight  to  the  heart  of  the 
kingdom  of  slavery  and  cotton.  The  day 
before  the  election,  he  spoke  at  Montgomery, 
Yancey’s  home ; that  night,  he  slept  at  Mo- 
bile. If  in  1858  he  was  like  Napoleon  the 
afternoon  of  Marengo,  now  he  was  like 
Napoleon  struggling  backward  in  the  dark- 
ness toward  the  lost  field  of  Waterloo. 
There  was  a true  dignity  and  a true  patriot- 
ism in  his  appeal  to  his  maddened  country- 
men not  to  lift  their  hands  against  the  Union 
their  fathers  made  : — 

“ Woodman,  spare  that  tree  ! 

Touch  not  a single  hough.” 

An  old  soldier  of  the  Confederacy,  scarred 
with  the  wounds  he  took  at  Bull  Run,  look- 
ing back  over  a wasted  life  to  the  youth  he 
sacrificed  in  that  ill-starred  cause,  remembers 
now  as  he  remembers  nothing  else  of  the 
whole  year  of  revolution  the  last  plea  of 
Douglas  for  the  old  party,  the  old  Constitu- 
tion, the  old  Union. 


THE  RIVALS 


137 


He  carried  but  one  State  outright,  and 
got  but  twelve  votes  iu  the  electoral  college. 
Lincoln  swept  the  North,  Breckinridge  the 
South,  and  Bell  the  border  States.  Never- 
theless, in  the  popular  vote,  hopeless  candi- 
date that  he  was,  he  stood  next  to  Lincohi, 
and  none  of  his  competitors  had  a following 
so  evenly  distributed  throughout  the  whole 
country. 

When  all  was  over,  he  could  not  rest,  for 
he  was  still  the  first  man  in  Congress,  but 
hurried  back  to  Washington  and  joined  in 
the  anxious  conferences  of  such  as  were 
striving  for  a peaceable  settlement.  When 
South  Carolina  seceded,  he  announced 
plainly  enough  that  he  did  not  believe  in  the 
right  of  secession  or  consider  that  there  was 
any  grievance  sufficient  to  justify  the  act. 
But  he  was  for  concessions  if  they  would 
save  the  country  from  civil  war.  Crittenden, 
of  Kentucky,  coming  forward  after  the  man- 
ner of  Clay  with  a series  of  amendments  to 
the  Constitution,  and  another  Committee  of 
Thirteen  being  named,  Douglas  was  ready  to 
play  the  same  part  he  had  played  in  1850. 


138  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

But  the  plan  could  not  pass  the  Senate,  and 
one  after  another  the  cotton  States  followed 
South  Carolina.  Then  he  labored  with  the 
men  of  the  border  States,  and  broke  his  last 
lance  with  Breckinridge,  who,  when  he 
ceased  to  be  Vice-President,  came  down  for 
a little  while  upon  the  floor  as  a senator  to 
defend  the  men  whom  he  was  about  to  join 
in  arms  against  their  country.  Douglas  en- 
gaged him  with  all  the  old  fire  and  force, 
and  worsted  him  in  the  debate. 

His  bearing  toward  Lincoln  was  generous 
and  manly.  When  Lincoln,  rising  to  pro- 
nounce his  first  inaugural  address,  looked 
awkwardly  about  him  for  a place  to  bestow 
his  hat  that  he  might  adjust  his  glasses  to 
read  those  noble  paragraphs,  Douglas  came 
forward  and  took  it  from  his  hand.  The 
gracefid  courtesy  won  him  praise  ; and  that 
was  his  attitude  toward  the  new  administra- 
tion. The  day  Sumter  was  fired  on,  he  went 
to  the  President  to  offer  his  help  and  coun- 
sel. There  is  reason  to  believe  that  during 
those  fearful  early  days  of  power  and  trial 
Lincoln  came  into  a better  opinion  of  his 
rival. 


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139 


The  help  of  Douglas  was  of  moment,  for 
he  had  the  right  to  speak  for  the  Democrats 
of  the  North.  On  his  way  homeward,  he 
was  everywhere  besought  to  speak.  Once, 
he  was  aroused  from  sleep  to  address  an 
Ohio  regiment  marching  to  the  front,  and 
his  great  voice  rolled  down  upon  them, 
aligned  beneath  him  in  the  darkness,  a word 
of  loyalty  and  courage.  At  Chicago  he 
spoke  firmly  and  finally,  for  himself  and  for 
his  party.  While  the  hope  of  compromise 
lingered,  he  had  gone  to  the  extreme  of  mag- 
nanimity, but  the  time  for  conciliation  was 
past.  “ There  can  be  no  neutrals  in  this 
war,”  he  said : “ only  patriots  and  traitors.” 
They  were  the  best  words  he  could  have 
spoken.  They  were  the  last  he  ever  spoke 
to  his  countrymen,  for  at  once  he  was  stricken 
down  with  a swift  and  mortal  illness  and 
hurried  to  his  end.  A little  while  before 
the  end,  his  wife  bent  over  him  for  a message 
to  his  sons.  He  roused  himself,  and  said  : 
“ Tell  them  to  obey  the  laws  and  support 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.” 
He  died  on  June  11,  1861,  in  the  forty- 
ninth  year  of  his  age. 


140  STEPHEN  ARNOLD  DOUGLAS 

It  was  a hard  time  to  die.  War  was  at 
hand,  and  his  strong  nature  stirred  at  the 
call.  Plunged  in  his  youth  into  affairs,  and 
wonted  all  his  life  to  action,  he  had  played 
a man’s  part  in  great  events,  and  greater 
were  impending.  He  had  taken  many 
blows  of  men  and  circumstance,  and  stormy 
times  might  bring  redress.  He  was  a leader, 
and  for  want  of  him  a great  party  must  go 
leaderless  and  stumbling  to  a long  series  of 
defeats.  He  was  a true  American,  and  his 
country  was  in  danger.  He  was  ambitious, 
and  his  career  was  not  rightly  finished.  He 
was  the  second  man  in  the  Republic,  and  he 
might  yet  be  the  first. 

But  first  he  never  could  have  been  while 
Lincoln  lived,  nor  ever  could  have  got  a hold 
like  Lincoln’s  on  his  kind.  His  place  is  se- 
cure among  the  venturesome,  strong,  self-re- 
liant men  who  in  various  ages  and  countries 
have  for  a time  hastened,  or  stayed,  or  di- 
verted from  its  natural  channel  the  great 
stream  of  affairs.  The  sin  of  his  ambition 
is  forgiven  him  for  the  good  end  he  made. 
But  for  all  his  splendid  energy  and  his 


THE  RIVALS 


141 


brilliant  parts,  for  all  the  charm  of  his  bold 


assault  on  fortune  and  his  dauntless  bearing: 

— 1 • 


in  adversity,  we  cannot  turn  from  him  to  his 


rival  but  with  changed  and  softened  eyes. 


For  Lincoln,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  few  men 
eminent  in  politics  whom  we  admit  into  the 

hidden  places  of  our  thought ; and  there, 
released  from  that  coarse  clay  which  pris- 

oned him,  we  companion  him  forever  with 
the  gentle  and  heroic  of  older  lands.  Doug- 
las abides  without. 


(ffibe  fitoer-sibe 

Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  Co, 
Cambridge , Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


